The properties of two-component Fermi gases with zero-range interactions are universal. We use an explicitly correlated Gaussian basis set expansion approach to investigate small equal-mass two-component Fermi gases under spherically symmetric external harmonic confinement. At unitarity, we determine the ground-state energy for systems with up to 10 particles interacting through finite-range two-body potentials for both even and odd numbers of particles. We extrapolate the energies to the zero-range limit using a novel scheme that removes the linear and, in some cases, also the quadratic dependence of the ground-state energies on the two-body range. Our extrapolated zero-range energies are compared with results from the literature. We also calculate the two-body Tan contact and structural properties.

• Received 16 April 2015

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.92.013608