No Arabic abstract
In this work we study the particle conductance of a strongly interacting Fermi gas through a quantum point contact. With an atom-molecule two-channel model, we compute the contribution to particle conductance by both the fermionic atoms and the bosonic molecules using the Keldysh formalism. Focusing on the regime above the Fermi superfluid transition temperature, we find that the fermionic contribution to the conductance is reduced by interaction compared with the quantized value for the non-interacting case; while the bosonic contribution to the conductance exhibits a plateau with non-universal values that is larger than the quantized conductance. This feature is particularly profound at temperature close to the superfluid transition. We emphasize that the enhanced conductance arises because of the bosonic nature of closed channel molecules and the low-dimensionality of the quantum point contact.
Using near-exact numerical simulations we study the propagation of an impurity through a one-dimensional Bose lattice gas for varying bosonic interaction strengths and filling factors at zero temperature. The impurity is coupled to the Bose gas and confined to a separate tilted lattice. The precise nature of the transport of the impurity is specific to the excitation spectrum of the Bose gas which allows one to measure properties of the Bose gas non-destructively, in principle, by observing the impurity; here we focus on the spatial and momentum distributions of the impurity as well as its reduced density matrix. For instance we show it is possible to determine whether the Bose gas is commensurately filled as well as the bandwidth and gap in its excitation spectrum. Moreover, we show that the impurity acts as a witness to the cross-over of its environment from the weakly to the strongly interacting regime, i.e., from a superfluid to a Mott insulator or Tonks-Girardeau lattice gas and the effects on the impurity in both of these strongly-interacting regimes are clearly distinguishable. Finally, we find that the spatial coherence of the impurity is related to its propagation through the Bose gas, giving an experimentally controllable example of noise-enhanced quantum transport.
Recent advances in experimental techniques allow one to create a quantum point contact between two Fermi superfluids in cold atomic gases with a tunable transmission coefficient. In this Letter we propose that three distinct behaviors of charge transports between two Fermi superfluids can be realized in this single setup, which are the multiple Andreev reflection, the self-trapping and the Josephson oscillation. We investigate the dynamics of atom number difference between two reservoirs for different initial conditions and different transmission coefficients, and present a coherent picture of how the crossover between different regimes takes place. Our results can now be directly verified in current experimental system.
We present an experimental investigation of the dynamic spin response of a strongly interacting Fermi gas using Bragg spectroscopy. By varying the detuning of the Bragg lasers, we show that it is possible to measure the response in the spin and density channels separately. At low Bragg energies, the spin response is suppressed due to pairing, whereas the density response is enhanced. These experiments provide the first independent measurements of the spin-parallel and spin-antiparallel dynamic and static structure factors and open the way to a complete study of the structure factors at any momentum. At high momentum the spin-antiparallel dynamic structure factor displays a universal high frequency tail, proportional to $omega^{-5/2}$, where $hbar omega$ is the probe energy.
We realize a two-component dipolar Fermi gas with tunable interactions, using erbium atoms. Employing a lattice-protection technique, we selectively prepare deeply degenerate mixtures of the two lowest spin states and perform high-resolution Feshbach spectroscopy in an optical dipole trap. We identify a comparatively broad Feshbach resonance and map the interspin scattering length in its vicinity. The Fermi mixture shows a remarkable collisional stability in the strongly interacting regime, providing a first step towards studies of superfluid pairing, crossing from Cooper pairs to bound molecules, in presence of dipole-dipole interactions.
Transport of strongly interacting fermions governs modern materials -- from the high-$T_c$ cuprates to bilayer graphene --, but also nuclear fission, the merging of neutron stars and the expansion of the early universe. Here we observe a universal quantum limit of diffusivity in a homogeneous, strongly interacting Fermi gas of atoms by studying sound propagation and its attenuation via the coupled transport of momentum and heat. In the normal state, the sound diffusivity ${D}$ monotonically decreases upon lowering the temperature $T$, in contrast to the diverging behavior of weakly interacting Fermi liquids. As the superfluid transition temperature is crossed, ${D}$ attains a universal value set by the ratio of Plancks constant ${h}$ and the particle mass ${m}$. This finding of quantum limited sound diffusivity informs theories of fermion transport, with relevance for hydrodynamic flow of electrons, neutrons and quarks.