No Arabic abstract
Superfluidity and superconductivity have been studied widely since the last century in many different contexts ranging from nuclear matter to atomic quantum gases. The rigidity of these systems with respect to external perturbations results in frictionless motion for superfluids and resistance-free electric current in superconductors. This peculiar behaviour is lost when external perturbations overcome a critical threshold, i.e. above a critical magnetic field or a critical current for superconductors. In superfluids, such as liquid helium or ultracold gases, the corresponding quantities are critical rotation rate and critical velocity, respectively. Enhancing the critical values is of great fundamental and practical value. Here we demonstrate that superfluidity can be achieved for flow above the critical velocity through quantum interference induced resonances. This has far reaching consequences for the fundamental understanding of superfluidity and superconductivity and opens up new application possibilities in quantum metrology, e.g. in rotation sensing.
We develop a theory for the interaction of light with superfluid optical media, describing the motion of quantum impurities that are created and dragged through the liquid by propagating photons. It is well known that a mobile impurity suffers dissipation due to phonon emission as soon as it moves faster than the speed of sound in the superfluid - Landaus critical velocity. Surprisingly we find that in the present hybrid light-matter setting, polaritonic impurities can be protected against environmental decoherence and be allowed to propagate well above the Landau velocity without jeopardizing the superfluid response of the medium.
We analyse a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) mixed with a superfluid two-component Fermi gas in the whole BCS-BEC cross-over. Using a quasiparticle random phase approximation combined with Beliaev theory to describe the Fermi superfluid and the BEC respectively, we show that the single particle and collective excitations of the Fermi gas give rise to an induced interaction between the bosons, which varies strongly with momentum and frequency. It diverges at the sound mode of the Fermi superfluid, resulting in a sharp avoided crossing feature and a corresponding sign change of the interaction energy shift in the excitation spectrum of the BEC. In addition, the excitation of quasiparticles in the Fermi superfluid leads to damping of the excitations in the BEC. Besides studying induced interactions themselves, these prominent effects can be used to systematically probe the strongly interacting Fermi gas.
We numerically model experiments on the superfluid critical velocity of an elongated, harmonically trapped Bose-Einstein condensate as reported by [P. Engels and C. Atherton, Phys. Rev. Lett. 99, 160405 (2007)]. These experiments swept an obstacle formed by an optical dipole potential through the long axis of the condensate at constant velocity. Their results found an increase in the resulting density fluctuations of the condensate above an obstacle velocity of $vapprox 0.3$ mm/s, suggestive of a superfluid critical velocity substantially less than the average speed of sound. However, our analysis shows that the that the experimental observations of Engels and Atherton are in fact consistent with a superfluid critical velocity equal to the local speed of sound. We construct a model of energy transfer to the system based on the local density approximation to explain the experimental observations, and propose and simulate experiments that sweep potentials through harmonically trapped condensates at a constant fraction of the local speed of sound. We find that this leads to a sudden onset of excitations above a critical fraction, in agreement with the Landau criterion for superfluidity.
Critical velocities have been observed in an ultracold superfluid Fermi gas throughout the BEC-BCS crossover. A pronounced peak of the critical velocity at unitarity demonstrates that superfluidity is most robust for resonant atomic interactions. Critical velocities were determined from the abrupt onset of dissipation when the velocity of a moving one dimensional optical lattice was varied. The dependence of the critical velocity on lattice depth and on the inhomogeneous density profile was studied.
In this letter we show that the vortex lattice structure in the Bose-Fermi superfluid mixture can undergo a sequence of structure transitions when the Fermi superfluid is tuned from the BCS regime to the BEC regime. This is due to different vortex core structure of the Fermi superfluid in the BCS regime and in the BEC regime. In the former the vortex core is nearly filled, while the density at the vortex core gradually decreases until it empties out at the BEC regime. Therefore, with the density-density interaction between the Bose and the Fermi superfluids, the two sets of vortex lattices interact stronger in the BEC regime that yields the structure transition of vortex lattices. In view of recent realization of this superfluid mixture and vortices therein, our theoretical predication can be verified experimentally in near future.