Elongated Fermi superfluid: absence of critical imbalance enhancement at equilibrium

We show that the maximum population imbalance ratio $P_\mathrm{CC}$ for a two-component Fermi gas near the unitarity limit to condense does not increase with the trap aspect ratio $\lambda$, by two methods of 1) solving the Bogoliubov-de Gennes equations with coupling-constant renormalization, and 2) studying the pairing susceptibility by the real-space self-consistent $T$-matrix approximation. The deviation of the cloud shape from what is expected from the trap shape increases but stays minor with increasing $\lambda$ up to 50. This finding indicates that despite the apparent discrepancy between the MIT and Rice experiments over the value of $P_\mathrm{CC}$ and the validity of local density approximation, the equilibrium state of the system for the aspect ratio in the Rice experiment should be consistent with that of MIT.