The normal phase of an imbalanced Fermi gas

Abstract

Recent experiments on imbalanced Fermi gases have raised interest in the physics of an impurity immersed in a Fermi sea, the so-called Fermi polaron. In this letter, a simple theory is devised to describe dilute Fermi-polaron ensembles corresponding to the normal phase of an imbalanced Fermi gas. An exact formula is obtained for the dominant interaction between polarons, expressed solely in terms of a single polaron parameter. The physics of this interaction is identified as a signature of the Pauli exclusion principle.