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arXiv:1907.08052 · Physical Review A

Critical Josephson current in BCS-BEC–crossover superfluids

Matteo Zaccanti, W. Zwerger

Published Dec 2, 2019• 30 citations
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Abstract

We develop a microscopic model to describe the Josephson tunneling between two superfluid reservoirs of ultracold fermionic atoms which accounts for the dependence of the critical current on both the barrier height and the interaction strength along the crossover from the BCS to the BEC regime. Building on a previous study [F. Meier and W. Zwerger, Phys. Rev. A 64, 033610 (2001)] of weakly interacting bosons, we derive analytic results for the Josephson critical current at zero temperature for homogeneous and trapped systems at arbitrary coupling. The critical current exhibits a maximum near the unitarity limit which arises from the competition between the increasing condensate fraction and a decrease in the chemical potential along the evolution from the BCS to the BEC limit. Our results agree quantitatively with numerical simulations and recent experimental data.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.100.063601

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We develop a microscopic model to describe the Josephson tunneling between two superfluid reservoirs of ultracold fermionic atoms which accounts for the dependence of the critical current on both the barrier height and the interaction strength along the crossover from the BCS to the BEC regime. Building on a previous study [F. Meier and W. Zwerger, Phys. Rev. A 64, 033610 (2001)] of weakly interacting bosons, we derive analytic results for the Josephson critical current at zero temperature for homogeneous and trapped systems at arbitrary coupling. The critical current exhibits a maximum near the unitarity limit which arises from the competition between the increasing condensate fraction and a decrease in the chemical potential along the evolution from the BCS to the BEC limit. Our results agree quantitatively with numerical simulations and recent experimental data.
The Josephson current-phase characteristics, that arise when a supercurrent flows across two fermionic superfluids separated by a potential barrier, can be controlled by varying either the interparticle coupling or the temperature. While the coupling dependence has been addressed in detail both theoretically and experimentally for an attractive Fermi gas undergoing the BCS-BEC crossover, a corresponding study of the temperature dependence of the Josephson characteristics is still lacking in this context. Here, we investigate the combined coupling and temperature dependence of the Josephson characteristics in a systematic way for a wide set of barriers, within ranges of height and width that can be experimentally explored. Our study smoothly connects the two limiting cases, of nonoverlapping composite bosons at low temperature described by the Gross-Piatevskii equation, and of strongly overlapping Cooper pairs near the critical temperature described by the Ginzburg-Landau equation. In this way, we are able to explore several interesting effects related to how the current-phase characteristics evolve along the BCS-BEC crossover as a function of temperature and of barrier shape. These effects include the coherence length outside the barrier and the pair penetration length inside the barrier (which is related to the proximity effect), as well as the temperature evolution of the Landau criterion in the limit of a vanishingly small barrier. A comparison is also presented between the available experimental data for the critical current and our theoretical results over a wide range of couplings along the BCS-BEC crossover.
A realistic description of the Josephson effect at finite temperature with ultracold Fermi gases embedded in nontrivial geometrical constraints (typically, a trap plus a barrier) requires appropriate consideration of pairing fluctuations that arise in inhomogeneous environments. Here, we apply the theoretical approach developed in a companion paper [Pisani et al., Phys. Rev. B 108, 214503 (2023)], where the inclusion of pairing fluctuations beyond mean field across the BCS--Bose-Einstein-condensate (BEC) crossover at finite temperature is combined with a detailed description of the gap parameter in a nontrivial geometry. In this way, we are able to account for the experimental results on the Josephson critical current, reported both at low temperature for various couplings across the BCS-BEC crossover and as a function of temperature at unitarity. Besides validating the theoretical approach of the companion paper, our numerical results reveal generic features of the Josephson effect which may not readily emerge from an analysis of corresponding experiments with condensed-matter samples owing to the unique intrinsic flexibility of experiments with ultracold gases.
We study the stationary Josephson effect for neutral fermions across the BCS-BEC (Bose-Einstein condensate) crossover, by solving numerically the Bogoliubov-de Gennes equations at zero temperature. The Josephson current is found to be considerably enhanced for all barriers at about unitarity. For vanishing barrier, the Josephson critical current approaches the Landau limiting value which, depending on the coupling, is determined by either pair-breaking or sound-mode excitations. In the coupling range from the BCS limit to unitarity, a procedure is proposed to extract the pairing gap from the Landau limiting current.
We theoretically study the Josephson effect in ultracold Fermi gases, where the two sides of the Josephson junction are independently tuned to different regions of the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS)-Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) crossover. Using the nonequilibrium Green's function approach combined with the tunnel Hamiltonian formalism and a mean-field approach, we evaluate the DC and AC Josephson currents throughout the entire crossover region. We calculate the DC Josephson current as a function of interaction strength by tuning both sides of the junction synchronously from the BCS to the BEC regimes, and give the asymptotic expression of the current in the deep BCS and BEC limits. We also study the AC Josephson junction through the interaction-asymmetric junction by fixing the interaction in one reservoir and tuning that of the other one. A peak of the tunneling current is found when one side is fixed in the BCS limit and the other side is tuned into the BEC regime, which corresponds to the interaction-biased Riedel peak. Our results indicate the competition between contributions of increasing pair spectral weight and decreasing chemical potential to Josephson tunneling throughout the BCS-BEC crossover, and demonstrate the realization of the Riedel peak in strong-coupling quantum gases.
A realistic description of the Josephson effect at finite temperature with ultra-cold Fermi gases embedded in nontrivial geometrical constraints (typically, a trap plus a barrier) requires appropriate consideration of pairing fluctuations that arise in inhomogeneous environments. Here, we apply the theoretical approach developed in the companion article [Pisani \emph{et al.}, Phys. Rev. B {\bf 108}, 214503 (2023)], where the inclusion of pairing fluctuations beyond mean field across the BCS-BEC crossover at finite temperature is combined with a detailed description of the gap parameter in a nontrivial geometry. In this way, we are able to account for the experimental results on the Josephson critical current, reported both at low temperature for various couplings across the BCS-BEC crossover and as a function of temperature at unitarity. Besides validating the theoretical approach of the companion article, our numerical results reveal generic features of the Josephson effect which may not readily emerge from an analysis of corresponding experiments with condensed-matter samples owing to the unique intrinsic flexibility of experiments with ultra-cold gases.
In this thesis we study the BCS-BEC crossover in a gas of ultracold atoms interacting via a two body contact potential and Rabi coupling. We start with a review of the standard BCS-BEC crossover and then derive the corresponding results for the Rabi-coupled system. Among the calculated quantities are the critical temperature, the energy gap, the condensate fraction, the superfluid fraction at the mean field level and the critical temperature beyond mean field, obtained with the NSR approach and the Babaev-Kleinert one.