Breakdown of the Wiedemann-Franz law in a unitary Fermi gas

We report on coupled heat and particle transport measurements through a quantum point contact (QPC) connecting two reservoirs of resonantly interacting, finite temperature Fermi gases. After heating one of them, we observe a particle current flowing from cold to hot. We monitor the temperature evolution of the reser- voirs and find that the system evolves after an initial response into a nonequilibrium steady state with finite temperature and chemical potential differences across the QPC. In this state any relaxation in the form of heat and particle currents vanishes. From our measurements we extract the transport coefficients of the QPC and deduce a Lorenz number violating the Wiedemann–Franz law by one order of magnitude, a characteristic persisting even for a wide contact. In contrast, the Seebeck coefficient takes a value close to that expected for a noninteracting Fermi gas and shows a smooth decrease as the atom density close to the QPC is increased beyond the superfluid transition. Our work represents a fermionic analog of the fountain effect observed with super- fluid helium and poses challenges for microscopic modeling of the finite temperature dynamics of the unitary Fermi gas.

Quantum Phase Transition in a Low-Dimensional Weakly Interacting Bose Gas

Luca Fontanesi

This thesis is devoted to the study of the effect of disorder on low-dimensional weakly interacting Bose gases. In particular, the disorder triggers a quantum phase transition in one dimension at zero temperature that is investigated here through the study of the long-range behaviour of the one-body density matrix. An algebraic spatial decay of the coherence marks the quasicondensate, whereas, in the case of strong disorder, an exponential decay is recovered and it characterizes the insulating Bose-glass phase. This analysis is performed using an extended Bogoliubov theory to treat low dimensional Bose gases within a density-phase approach. A systematic numerical study allowed to draw the phase diagram of 1D weakly interacting bosons. The phase boundary obeys two different power laws between interaction and disorder strength depending on the regime of the gas where the transition occurs. These relations can be explained by means of scaling arguments valid in the white noise limit and in the Thomas-Fermi regime of the Bose gas. The phase transition to a quasicondensed phase comes along with the onset of superfluidity: the inspection of the superfluid fraction of the gas is consistent with these predictions for the boundary. The finite temperature case and the scenario in two dimensions are briefly discussed. The quantum phase transition is caused by low-energy phase fluctuations that destroy the quasi-long-range order characterizing the uniform system. Within the approach presented here, the phase fluctuations are identified as the low-lying Bogoliubov modes. Their properties have been investigated in detail to understand which changes trigger the phase transition and we found that the transition to the insulating phase is accompanied by a diverging density of states and a localization length, measured through the inverse participation ratio, that diverges as a power-law with power – 1 for vanishing energy. The fragmentation of the gas is also studied: this notion is very often associated with the onset of the insulating phase. The characterization of the density fragmentation is performed by analyzing the probability distribution of the density. A density profile is defined as fragmented when the probability distribution at vanishing density is finite or divergent and this happens for a gas in the Bose-glass phase. On the contrary, the superfluid phase is characterized by a zero limiting probability of having vanishing densities. This definition is derived analytically, and confirmed by a numerical study. This fragmentation criterion is particularly suited for detecting the phase transition in experiments: when a harmonic trap is included, the transition to the insulating phase can be extracted from the statistics of the local density distribution.

EPFL2011

Superfluid–insulator transition in weakly interacting disordered Bose gases: a kernel polynomial approach

Pierre Lugan, Joseph Saliba, Vincenzo Savona

An iterative scheme based on the kernel polynomial method is devised for the efficient computation of the one-body density matrix of weakly interacting Bose gases within Bogoliubov theory. This scheme is used to analyze the coherence properties of disordered bosons in one and two dimensions. In the one-dimensional geometry, we examine the quantum phase transition between superfluid and Bose glass at weak interactions, and we recover the scaling of the phase boundary that was characterized using a direct spectral approach by Fontanesi et al (2010 Phys. Rev. A 81 053603). The kernel polynomial scheme is also used to study the disorder-induced condensate depletion in the two-dimensional geometry. Our approach paves the way for an analysis of coherence properties of Bose gases across the superfluid-insulator transition in two and three dimensions.

Institute of Physics (IoP) and Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft2013

Mapping out spin and particle conductances in a quantum point contact

Jean-Philippe Brantut

We study particle and spin transport in a single mode quantum point contact using a charge neutral, quantum degenerate Fermi gas with tunable, attractive interactions. This yields the spin and particle conductance of the point contact as a function of chemical potential or confinement. The measurements cover a regime from weak attraction, where quantized conductance is observed, to the resonantly interacting superfluid. Spin conductance exhibits a broad maximum when varying the chemical potential at moderate interactions, which signals the emergence of Cooper pairing. In contrast, the particle conductance is unexpectedly enhanced even before the gas is expected to turn into a superfluid, continuously rising from the plateau at 1/h for weak interactions to plateaux-like features at non-universal values as high as 4/h for intermediate interactions. For strong interactions, the particle conductance plateaux disappear and the spin conductance gets suppressed, confirming the spin-insulating character of a superfluid. Our observations document the breakdown of universal conductance quantization as many-body correlations appear. The observed anomalous quantization challenges a Fermi liquid description of the normal phase, shedding new light on the nature of the strongly attractive Fermi gases.

2015

Quantum Phase Transition in a Low-Dimensional Weakly Interacting Bose Gas

Luca Fontanesi

EPFL2011