Pair formation and collapse in imbalanced fermion populations with unequal masses

We present an exact quantum Monte Carlo study of the effect of unequal masses on pair formation in fermionic systems with population imbalance loaded into optical lattices. We have considered three forms of the attractive interaction and find in all cases that the system is unstable and collapses as the mass difference increases and that the ground state becomes an inhomogeneous collapsed state. We also address the question of canonical vs. grand canonical ensemble and its role, if any, in stabilizing certain phases. Copyright (C) EPLA, 2009