No Arabic abstract
Two-dimensional ($p_{x}+ip_{y}$) superfluids/superconductors offer a playground for studying intriguing physics such as quantum teleportation, non-Abelian statistics, and topological quantum computation. Creating such a superfluid in cold fermionic atom optical traps using p-wave Feshbach resonance is turning out to be challenging. Here we propose a method to create a $p_{x}+ip_{y}$ superfluid directly from an s-wave interaction making use of a topological Berry phase, which can be artificially generated. We discuss ways to detect the spontaneous Hall mass current, which acts as a diagnostic for the chiral p-wave superfluid.
We propose and analyze a probabilistic scheme to entangle two spatially separated topological qubits in a $p_{x}+ip_{y}$ superfluid using controlled collisions between atoms in movable dipole traps and unpaired atoms inside vortex cores in the superfluid. We discuss how to test the violation of Bells inequality with the generated entanglement. A set of universal quantum gates is shown to be implementable textit{deterministically} using the entanglement despite the fact that the entangled states can only be created probabilistically.
We analyze atom-surface magnetic interactions on atom chips where the magnetic trapping potentials are produced by current carrying wires made of electrically anisotropic materials. We discuss a theory for time dependent fluctuations of the magnetic potential, arising from thermal noise originating from the surface. It is shown that using materials with a large electrical anisotropy results in a considerable reduction of heating and decoherence rates of ultra-cold atoms trapped near the surface, of up to several orders of magnitude. The trap loss rate due to spin flips is expected to be significantly reduced upon cooling the surface to low temperatures. In addition, the electrical anisotropy significantly suppresses the amplitude of static spatial potential corrugations due to current scattering within imperfect wires. Also the shape of the corrugation pattern depends on the electrical anisotropy: the preferred angle of the scattered current wave fronts can be varied over a wide range. Materials, fabrication, and experimental issues are discussed, and specific candidate materials are suggested.
We study a simple model of N-component fermions with contact interactions which describes fermionic atoms with N=2F+1 hyperfine states loaded into a one-dimensional optical lattice. We show by means of analytical and numerical approaches that, for attractive interaction, a quasi-long-range molecular superfluid phase emerges at low density. In such a phase, the pairing instability is strongly suppressed and the leading instability is formed from bound-states made of N fermions. At small density, the molecular superfluid phase is generic and exists for a wide range of attractive contact interactions without an SU(N) symmetry between the hyperfine states.
We provide a systematic treatment of the tenfold way of classifying fermionic systems that naturally allows for the study of those with arbitrary $N$-body interactions. We identify four types of symmetries that such systems can possess, which consist of one ordinary type (usual unitary symmetries), and three non-ordinary symmetries (such as time reversal, charge conjugation and sublattice). Focusing on systems that possess no non-trivial ordinary symmetries, we demonstrate that the non-ordinary symmetries are strongly constrained. This approach not only leads very naturally to the tenfold classes, but also obtains the canonical representations of these symmetries in each of the ten classes. We also provide a group cohomological perspective of our results in terms of projective representations. We then use the canonical representations of the symmetries to obtain the structure of Hamiltonians with arbitrary $N$-body interactions in each of the ten classes. We show that the space of $N$-body Hamiltonians has an affine subspace (of a vector space) structure in classes which have either or both charge conjugation and sublattice symmetries. Our results can help address open questions on the topological classification of interacting fermionic systems.
From flow without dissipation of energy to the formation of vortices when placed within a rotating container, the superfluid state of matter has proven to be a very interesting physical phenomenon. Here we present the key mechanisms behind superfluidity in fermionic systems and apply our understanding to an exotic system found deep within the universe -- the superfluid found deep within a neutron star. A defining trait of a superfluid is the pairing gap, which the cooling curves of neutron stars depend on. The extreme conditions surrounding a neutron star prevent us from directly probing the superfluids properties, however, we can experimentally realize conditions resembling the interior through the use of cold atoms prepared in a laboratory and simulated on a computer. Experimentalists are becoming increasingly adept at realizing cold atomic systems in the lab that mimic the behavior of neutron stars and superconductors. In their turn, computational physicists are leveraging the power of supercomputers to simulate interacting atomic systems with unprecedented accuracy. This paper is intended to provide a pedagogical introduction to the underlying concepts and the possibility of using cold atoms as a tool that can help us make significant strides towards understanding exotic physical systems.