We investigate strong-coupling effects on normal state properties of an ultracold Fermi gas.Within the framework of T -matrix approximation in terms of pairing fluctuations, we calculate the single-particle density of states (DOS), as well as the spectral weight, over the entire BCS-BEC crossover region above the superfluid phase transition temperature T c . Starting from the weakcoupling BCS regime, we show that the so-called pseudogap develops in DOS above T c , which becomes remarkable in the crossover region. The pseudogap structure continuously changes into a fully gapped one in the strong-coupling BEC regime, where the gap energy is directly related to the binding energy of tightly bound molecules. We determine the pseudogap temperature T * where the dip structure in DOS vanishes. The value of T * is shown to be very different from another characteristic temperature T * * where a BCS-type double peak structure disappears in the spectral weight. While one finds T * > T * * in the BCS regime, T * * becomes higher than T * in the crossover region and BEC regime. Including this, we determine the pseudogap region in the phase diagram of ultracold Fermi gases. Our results would be useful in the search for the pseudogap region in ultracold 6 Li and 40 K Fermi gases.

We have studied superfluid-Mott insulating transition of spin-1 bosons interacting antiferromagnetically in an optical lattice. We have obtained the zero-temperature phase diagram by a mean-field approximation and have found that the superfluid phase is to be a polar state as a usual trapped spin-1 Bose gas. More interestingly, we have found that the Mott-insulating phase is strongly stabilized only when the number of atoms per site is even.

We study the superfluid-Mott-insulator transition of antiferromagnetic spin-1 bosons in an optical lattice described by a Bose-Hubbard model. Our variational study with the Gutzwiller variational wave function determines that the superfluid-Mott-insulator transition is a first-order one at a part of the phase boundary curve, contrary to the spinless case.