No Arabic abstract
We experimentally investigate the first-order correlation function of a trapped Fermi gas in the two-dimensional BEC-BCS crossover. We observe a transition to a low-temperature superfluid phase with algebraically decaying correlations. We show that the spatial coherence of the entire trapped system can be characterized by a single temperature-dependent exponent. We find the exponent at the transition to be constant over a wide range of interaction strengths across the crossover. This suggests that the phase transitions in both the bosonic regime and the strongly interacting crossover regime are of Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless-type and lie within the same universality class. On the bosonic side of the crossover, our data are well-described by Quantum Monte Carlo calculations for a Bose gas. In contrast, in the strongly interacting regime, we observe a superfluid phase which is significantly influenced by the fermionic nature of the constituent particles.
We investigate single-particle excitations and strong-coupling effects in a two-dimensional Fermi gas. Including pairing fluctuations within a Gaussian fluctuation theory, we calculate the density of states $rho(omega)$ near the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) transition temperature $T_{rm BKT}$. Near $T_{rm BKT}$, we show that superfluid fluctuations induce a pseudogap in $rho(omega)$. The pseudogap structure is very similar to the BCS superfluid density of states, although the superfluid order parameter is absent in the present two-dimensional case. Since a two-dimensional $^{40}$K Fermi gas has recently been realized, our results would contribute to the understanding of single-particle properties near the BKT instability.
Superfluidity in its various forms has fascinated scientists since the observation of frictionless flow in liquid helium II. In three spatial dimensions (3D), it is conceptually associated with the emergence of long-range order (LRO) at a critical temperature $T_{text{c}}$. One of its hallmarks, predicted by the highly successful two-fluid model and observed in both liquid helium and ultracold atomic gases, is the existence of two kinds of sound excitations, the first and second sound. In 2D systems, thermal fluctuations preclude LRO, but superfluidity nevertheless emerges at a nonzero $T_{text{c}}$ via the infinite-order Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) transition, which is associated with a universal jump in the superfluid density $n_{text{s}}$ without any discontinuities in the fluids thermodynamic properties. BKT superfluids are also predicted to support two sounds, but the observation of this has remained elusive. Here we observe first and second sound in a homogeneous 2D atomic Bose gas, and from the two temperature-dependent sound speeds extract its superfluid density. Our results agree with BKT theory, including the prediction for the universal superfluid-density jump.
We study the superfluid properties of two-dimensional spin-population-imbalanced Fermi gases to explore the interplay between the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) phase transition and the possible instability towards the Fulde-Ferrell (FF) state. By the mean-field approximation together with quantum fluctuations, we obtain phase diagrams as functions of temperature, chemical potential imbalance and binding energy. We find that the fluctuations change the mean-field phase diagram significantly. We also address possible effects of the phase separation and/or the anisotropic FF phase to the BKT mechanism. The superfluid density tensor of the FF state is obtained, and its transverse component is found always vanishing. This causes divergent fluctuations and possibly precludes the existence of the FF state at any non-zero temperature.
The quenched dynamics of an ultracold homogeneous atomic two-dimensional Bose gas subjected to periodic quenches across the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) phase transition are discussed. Specifically, we address the effect of periodic cycling of the effective atomic interaction strength between a thermal disordered state above, and a highly ordered state below the critical BKT interaction strength, by means of numerical simulations of the stochastic projected Gross-Pitaevskii equation. Probing the emerging dynamics as a function of the frequency of sinusoidal driving from low to high frequencies reveals diverse dynamical features, including phase-lagged quasi adiabatic reversible condensate formation, resonant excitation consistent with an intrinsic system relaxation timescale, and gradual establishment of dynamically-recurring or time-averaged non-equilibrium states with enhanced coherence which are neither condensed, nor thermal. Our study paves the way for experimental observation of such driven non-equilibrium ultracold superfluid states.
We study the critical point for the emergence of coherence in a harmonically trapped two-dimensional Bose gas with tuneable interactions. Over a wide range of interaction strengths we find excellent agreement with the classical-field predictions for the critical point of the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) superfluid transition. This allows us to quantitatively show, without any free parameters, that the interaction-driven BKT transition smoothly converges onto the purely quantum-statistical Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) transition in the limit of vanishing interactions.