The hallmark of superfluidity is the appearance of metastable flow-states that carry a persistent circulating current. Considering Bose-Hubbard superfluid rings, we clarify the role of “quantum chaos” in this context. We show that the standard Landau and Bogoliubov superfluidity criteria fail for such low-dimensional circuits. We also discuss the feasibility for a coherent operation of a SQUID-like setup. Finally, we address the manifestation of the strong many-body dynamical localization effect.
The hallmark of superfluidity is the appearance of metastable flow-states that carry a persistent circulating current. Considering Bose-Hubbard superfluid rings, we clarify the role of “quantum chaos” in this context. We show that the standard Landau and Bogoliubov superfluidity criteria fail for such low-dimensional circuits. We also discuss the feasibility for a coherent operation of a SQUID-like setup. Finally, we address the manifestation of the strong many-body dynamical localization effect.
The hallmark of superfluidity is the appearance of "vortex states" carrying a quantized metastable circulating current. Considering a unidirectional flow of particles in a ring, at first it appears that any amount of scattering will randomize the velocity, as in the Drude model, and eventually the ergodic steady state will be characterized by a vanishingly small fluctuating current. However, Landau and followers have shown that this is not always the case. If elementary excitations (e.g. phonons) have higher velocity than that of the flow, simple kinematic considerations imply metastability of the vortex state: the energy of the motion cannot dissipate into phonons. On the other hand if this Landau criterion is violated the circulating current can decay. Below we show that the standard Landau and Bogoliubov superfluidity criteria fail in low-dimensional circuits. Proper determination of the superfluidity regime-diagram must account for the crucial role of chaos, an ingredient missing from the conventional stability analysis. Accordingly, we find novel types of superfluidity, associated with irregular or chaotic or breathing vortex states.
We analyze the metastability of Bose-Hubbard condensates for finite-size one-dimensional ring lattices and open chains, using a semiclassical tomographic perspective that emphasizes the relation of the many-body spectrum to the underlying classical phase-space structures. In order to address quantum ergodicity in far-from-equilibrium scenarios of experimental interest, we inspect both local aspects (via Bogoliubov analysis) and global aspects (mixed regular-chaotic dynamics). In particular, we highlight the roles of the two parameters that control metastability, clarify the essential differences between low- and high-dimensional chaos, and show how the dynamical instabilities diminish in the limit of the Gross-Pitaevskii equation. It is somewhat frustrating that with more degrees of freedom, the dynamically metastable islands become better distinct from the ergodic sea, while their borders become ill-defined topologically. This stands in opposition to the very structured phase-space of two-degree-of-freedom systems, as reflected in the tomographic quantum spectrum.
A semiclassical theory is provided for the metastability regime diagram of atomtronic superfluid circuits. Such circuits typically exhibit high-dimensional chaos, and nonlinear resonances that couple the Bogoliubov excitations manifest. Contrary to the expectation, these resonances do not originate from the familiar Beliaev and Landau damping terms. Rather, they are described by a variant of the Cherry Hamiltonian of celestial mechanics. Consequently, we study the induced decay process and its dependence on the number of sites and condensed particles.
Abstract We present a kinetic description of superfluid currents in ring-shaped Bose-Einstein condensates based on the Wigner phase-space formalism. Starting from the Gross-Pitaevskii equation in a toroidal geometry, we derive a Vlasov-type equation for the angular Wigner function, in which the mean-field interaction generates an effective force proportional to the density gradient. Within this framework, we obtain the dispersion relation of collective modes and recover the Bogoliubov spectrum in the long-wavelength limit. We show that the Landau criterion for superfluidity can be interpreted as the absence of resonant phase-space trajectories satisfying the condition ω=qvℓ ω = q v ℓ . In a ring geometry, the quantization of angular momentum leads to a discrete set of velocities, which suppresses the availability of resonant states and strongly inhibits Landau damping. In contrast, in the continuous limit R→∞ R → ∞ , the spectrum becomes quasi-continuous and the standard Landau damping mechanism is recovered, establishing a direct connection between kinetic resonances and the energetic criterion for superfluidity. We further analyze the role of Bogoliubov depletion by considering a finite-width angular momentum distribution. Although resonant states formally exist in this case, we show that, for flow velocities below the sound velocity, the phase-space distribution does not provide the gradients required for energy transfer, and the superfluid current remains dynamically stable. Our results provide a unified phase-space interpretation of superfluidity, highlighting the role of angular momentum quantization and the structure of the distribution function in determining the stability of persistent currents. Graphic abstract Phase-space interpretation of superfluid stability in a ring Bose-Einstein condensate. For flow velocities below the sound velocity, resonant phase-space trajectories are unavailable and the superflow remains stable, whereas above the sound velocity resonant coupling becomes possible, leading to kinetic instability
We numerically study a Bose-Hubbard ring of finite size with disorder containing a finite number of bosons that are subject to an on-site two-body interaction. Our results show that moderate interactions induce dynamical thermalization in this isolated system. In this regime the individual many-body eigenstates are well described by the standard thermal Bose-Einstein distribution for well-defined values of the temperature and the chemical potential, which depend on the eigenstate under consideration. We show that the dynamical thermalization conjecture works well at both positive and negative temperatures. The relations to quantum chaos, quantum ergodicity, and the Åberg criterion are also discussed.
In the previous chapter we described quantized vortex lines, which are one of the characteristic features of superfluids. In a classical fluid, the circulation of vortex lines is not quantized and, in addition, vortex lines decay because of viscous processes. Another feature of a superfluid, the lack of response to rotation for a small enough angular velocity, was also demonstrated. This is analogous to the Meissner effect for superconductors. One characteristic common to superfluids and superconductors is the ability to carry currents without dissipation. Such current-carrying states are not the lowest-energy state of the system. They are metastable states, the existence of which is intimately connected to the nature of the low-lying elementary excitations. The word ‘superfluidity’ does not refer to a single property of the system, but it is used to describe a variety of different phenomena (see Ref. [1]). Historically, the connection between superfluidity and the existence of a condensate, a macroscopically occupied quantum state, dates back to Fritz London's suggestion in 1938, as we have described in Chapter 1. However, the connection between Bose–Einstein condensation and superfluidity is a subtle one. A Bose–Einstein condensed system does not necessarily exhibit superfluidity, an example being the ideal Bose gas for which the critical velocity vanishes, as demonstrated in Sec. 10.1 below. Also lower-dimensional systems may exhibit superfluid behaviour in the absence of a true condensate, as we shall see in Chapter 15.