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arXiv:1506.08413 · Physical Review A

Contact resistance and phase slips in mesoscopic superfluid-atom transport

Stephen Eckel, Jeffrey G. Lee, Fred Jendrzejewski, Christopher J. Lobb, Gretchen K. Campbell, W. T. Hill

Published Jun 15, 2016• 52 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We have experimentally measured transport of superfluid, bosonic atoms in a mesoscopic system: a small channel connecting two large reservoirs. Starting far from equilibrium (superfluid in a single reservoir), we observe first resistive flow transitioning at a critical current into superflow, characterized by oscillations. We reproduce this full evolution with a simple electronic circuit model. We compare our fitted conductance to two different microscopic phenomenological models. We also show that the oscillations are consistent with LC oscillations as estimated by the kinetic inductance and effective capacitance in our system. Our experiment provides an attractive platform to begin to probe the mesoscopic transport properties of a dilute, superfluid, Bose gas.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.93.063619

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We have experimentally measured transport of superfluid, bosonic atoms in a mesoscopic system: a small channel connecting two large reservoirs. Starting far from equilibrium (superfluid in a single reservoir), we observe first resistive flow transitioning at a critical current into superflow, characterized by oscillations. We reproduce this full evolution with a simple electronic circuit model. We compare our fitted conductance to two different microscopic phenomenological models. We also show that the oscillations are consistent with LC oscillations as estimated by the kinetic inductance and effective capacitance in our system. Our experiment provides an attractive platform to begin to probe the mesoscopic transport properties of a dilute, superfluid, Bose gas.
We study the emergence of dissipation in an atomic Josephson junction between weakly coupled superfluid Fermi gases. We find that vortex-induced phase slippage is the dominant microscopic source of dissipation across the Bose-Einstein condensate-Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer crossover. We explore different dynamical regimes by tuning the bias chemical potential between the two superfluid reservoirs. For small excitations, we observe dissipation and phase coherence to coexist, with a resistive current followed by well-defined Josephson oscillations. We link the junction transport properties to the phase-slippage mechanism, finding that vortex nucleation is primarily responsible for the observed trends of conductance and critical current. For large excitations, we observe the irreversible loss of coherence between the two superfluids, and transport cannot be described only within an uncorrelated phase-slip picture. Our findings open new directions for investigating the interplay between dissipative and superfluid transport in strongly correlated Fermi systems, and general concepts in out-of-equilibrium quantum systems.
We report the direct observation of resistive flow through a weak link in a weakly interacting atomic Bose-Einstein condensate. Two weak links separate our ring-shaped superfluid atomtronic circuit into two distinct regions, a source and a drain. Motion of these weak links allows for creation of controlled flow between the source and the drain. At a critical value of the weak link velocity, we observe a transition from superfluid flow to superfluid plus resistive flow. Working in the hydrodynamic limit, we observe a conductivity that is 4 orders of magnitude larger than previously reported conductivities for a Bose-Einstein condensate with a tunnel junction. Good agreement with zero-temperature Gross-Pitaevskii simulations and a phenomenological model based on phase slips indicate that the creation of excitations plays an important role in the resulting conductivity. Our measurements of resistive flow elucidate the microscopic origin of the dissipation and pave the way for more complex atomtronic devices.
We examine the properties of the atomic current in a superfluid oscillating circuit consisting of a mesoscopic channel that connects two reservoirs of a Bose-Einstein condensate. We investigate the presence of a critical current in the channel and examine how the amplitude of the oscillations in the number imbalance between the two reservoirs varies with the system parameters. In addition to highlighting that the dissipative resistance stems from the formation of vortex pairs, we also illustrate the role of these vortex pairs as a quantum current regulator. The dissipation strength is discrete based on the number imbalance, which corresponds to the emergence of vortex pairs in the system. Our findings indicate that the circuit demonstrates characteristics of both voltage-limiting and current-limiting mechanisms. To model the damping behavior of the atomic superfluid circuit, we develop an equivalent LC oscillator circuit with a quantum current regulator.
We study a flow of ultracold bosonic atoms through a one-dimensional channel that connects two macroscopic three-dimensional reservoirs of Bose-condensed atoms via weak links implemented as potential barriers between each of the reservoirs and the channel. We consider reservoirs at equal chemical potentials so that a superflow of the quasicondensate through the channel is driven purely by a phase difference $2\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Phi}}$ imprinted between the reservoirs. We find that the superflow never has the standard Josephson form $\ensuremath{\sim}\mathrm{sin}2\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Phi}}$. Instead, the superflow discontinuously flips direction at $2\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Phi}}=\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}\mathrm{\ensuremath{\pi}}$ and has metastable branches. We show that these features are robust and not smeared by fluctuations or phase slips. We describe a possible experimental setup for observing these phenomena.
Motivated by a recent experiment in ultracold atoms [S. Krinner et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 113, 8144 (2016)PNASA60027-842410.1073/pnas.1601812113], we analyze transport of attractively interacting fermions through a one-dimensional wire near the superfluid transition. We show that in a ballistic regime where the conductance is quantized in the absence of interaction, the conductance is renormalized by superfluid fluctuations in reservoirs. In particular, the particle conductance is strongly enhanced, and the conductance plateau is blurred by emergent bosonic pair transport. For spin transport, in addition to the contact resistance, the wire itself is resistive, leading to a suppression of the measured spin conductance. Our results are qualitatively consistent with the experimental observations.
We study the onset of dissipation in an atomic Josephson junction between Fermi superfluids in the molecular Bose-Einstein condensation limit of strong attraction. Our simulations identify the critical population imbalance and the maximum Josephson current delimiting dissipationless and dissipative transport, in quantitative agreement with recent experiments. We unambiguously link dissipation to vortex ring nucleation and dynamics, demonstrating that quantum phase slips are responsible for the observed resistive current. Our work directly connects microscopic features with macroscopic dissipative transport, providing a comprehensive description of vortex ring dynamics in three-dimensional inhomogeneous constricted superfluids at zero and finite temperatures.