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arXiv:1511.05961 · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Mapping out spin and particle conductances in a quantum point contact

Sebastian Krinner, Martin Lebrat, Dominik Husmann, Charles Grenier, Jean-Philippe Brantut, Tilman Esslinger

Published Jun 29, 2016• 70 citations

Abstract

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 [Formula: see text] for weak interactions to plateau-like features at nonuniversal values as high as [Formula: see text] for intermediate interactions. For strong interactions, the particle conductance plateaus 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 gas.

DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1601812113

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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 noninteracting case; while the bosonic contribution to the conductance exhibits a plateau with nonuniversal 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.

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.

Fermionic superfluid junctions typically exhibit suppressed thermal and spin transport due to the presence of a pairing gap but allow coherent particle transport. While dissipation generally weakens coherent transport, it can also induce excitations that open other transport channels. In this work, we experimentally study a one-dimensional superfluid junction of strongly interacting fermions with local particle loss and observe dissipation-induced thermal and spin transport that appear to saturate at strong dissipation. Notably, in this regime, the measured thermal and spin conductances are comparable to the universal quantized conductance of one-dimensional ideal Fermi gas. Qualitatively similar behavior is observed for two dissipation mechanisms, either spin-imbalanced or pairwise losses. Our findings provide new insights into transport in interacting open quantum systems and suggest possibilities of dissipative control of spin and thermoelectric transport.

Transport in strongly interacting Fermi gases provides a window into the nonequilibrium behavior of strongly correlated fermions. In particular, the interface between a strongly polarized normal gas and a weakly polarized superfluid at finite temperature presents a model for understanding transport at normal-superfluid and normal-superconductor interfaces. An excess of polarization in the normal phase or a deficit of polarization in the superfluid brings the system out of equilibrium, leading to transport currents across the interface. We implement a phenomenological mean-field model of the unitary Fermi gas, and investigate the transport of spin and mass under nonequilibrium conditions. We consider independently prepared normal and superfluid regions brought into contact, and calculate the instantaneous spin and mass currents across the normal-superfluid (NS) interface. For an unpolarized superfluid, we find that spin current is suppressed below a threshold value in the driving chemical potential differences, while the threshold nearly vanishes for a critically polarized superfluid. The mass current can exhibit a threshold in cases where Andreev reflection vanishes, while in general Andreev reflection prevents the occurrence of a threshold in the mass current. Our results provide guidance to future experiments aiming to characterize spin and mass transport across NS interfaces.

We compute spin transport in the unitary Fermi gas using the strong-coupling Luttinger-Ward theory. In the quantum degenerate regime the spin diffusivity attains a minimum value of ${D}_{s}\ensuremath{\simeq}1.3\ensuremath{\hbar}/m$ approaching the quantum limit of diffusion for a particle of mass

m

. Conversely, the spin drag rate reaches a maximum value of ${\ensuremath{\Gamma}}_{\mathrm{sd}}\ensuremath{\simeq}1.2{k}_{B}{T}_{F}/\ensuremath{\hbar}$ in terms of the Fermi temperature

{T}_{F}

. The frequency-dependent spin conductivity ${\ensuremath{\sigma}}_{s}(\ensuremath{\omega})$ exhibits a broad Drude peak, with spectral weight transferred to a universal high-frequency tail ${\ensuremath{\sigma}}_{s}(\ensuremath{\omega}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}\ensuremath{\infty})={\ensuremath{\hbar}}^{1/2}C/3\ensuremath{\pi}(m\ensuremath{\omega}{)}^{3/2}$ proportional to the Tan contact density

C

. For the spin susceptibility ${\ensuremath{\chi}}_{s}(T)$ we find no downturn in the normal phase.

Point contacts provide simple connections between macroscopic particle reservoirs. In electric circuits, strong links between metals, semiconductors, or superconductors have applications for fundamental condensed-matter physics as well as quantum information processing. However, for complex, strongly correlated materials, links have been largely restricted to weak tunnel junctions. We studied resonantly interacting Fermi gases connected by a tunable, ballistic quantum point contact, finding a nonlinear current-bias relation. At low temperature, our observations agree quantitatively with a theoretical model in which the current originates from multiple Andreev reflections. In a wide contact geometry, the competition between superfluidity and thermally activated transport leads to a conductance minimum. Our system offers a controllable platform for the study of mesoscopic devices based on strongly interacting matter.