We numerically study the transport properties of a two-dimensional Fermi gas in a weakly and strongly interacting regimes, in the range of temperatures close to the transition to a superfluid phase. For that we excite sound waves in a fermionic mixture by using the phase imprinting technique, follow their evolution, and finally determine both their speed and attenuation. Our formalism, originated from a density-functional theory, incorporates thermal fluctuations via the grand canonical ensemble description and with the help of Metropolis algoritm. From numerical simulations we extract temperature dependence of the sound velocity and diffusivity as well as the dependence on the interaction strength. We emphasize the role of virtual vortex-antivortex pairs creation in the process of sound dissipation.
We numerically study the transport properties of a two-dimensional Fermi gas in a weakly and strongly interacting regimes, in the range of temperatures close to the transition to a superfluid phase. For that we excite sound waves in a fermionic mixture by using the phase imprinting technique, follow their evolution, and finally determine both their speed and attenuation. Our formalism, originated from a density-functional theory, incorporates thermal fluctuations via the grand canonical ensemble description and with the help of Metropolis algoritm. From numerical simulations we extract temperature dependence of the sound velocity and diffusivity as well as the dependence on the interaction strength. We emphasize the role of virtual vortex-antivortex pairs creation in the process of sound dissipation.
Strongly interacting two-dimensional Fermi systems are one of the great remaining challenges in many-body physics due to the interplay of strong local correlations and enhanced long-range fluctuations. Here, we probe the thermodynamic and transport properties of a 2D Fermi gas across the BEC-BCS crossover by studying the propagation and damping of sound modes. We excite particle currents by imprinting a phase step onto homogeneous Fermi gases trapped in a box potential and extract the speed of sound from the frequency of the resulting density oscillations. We measure the speed of sound across the BEC-BCS crossover and compare the resulting dynamic measurement of the equation of state both to a static measurement based on recording density profiles and to quantum Monte Carlo calculations and find reasonable agreement between all three. We also measure the damping of the sound mode, which is determined by the shear and bulk viscosities as well as the thermal conductivity of the gas. We find that the damping is minimal in the strongly interacting regime and the diffusivity approaches the universal quantum bound ℏ/m of a perfect fluid.
Strongly correlated two-dimensional (2D) systems are a fascinating field of study. The reduced dimensionality should in principle impede phenomena such as Bose-Einstein condensation or superfluidity. Yet, evidence suggests that superfluidity and superconductivity are especially robust in 2D: In almost all known high Tc-supercondcutors, strongly correlated 2D structures and higher-partial-wave coupling seem to play a crucial role. In this thesis, we use ultracold homogeneous gases of lithium 6 with tunable interactions to perform analog quantum simulation of these captivating systems.As the main result of this thesis, I present the first measurements of the speed and attenuation of sound waves in ultracold 2D Fermi gases, which we use to probe the thermodynamic and transport properties of the gas. From the speed of sound, we extract the compressibility equation of state and compare it both to an independent static measurement and to quantum Monte Carlo calculations and find reasonable agreement between the three. The damping of the sound waves, which is determined by the shear and bulk viscosities as well as the thermal conductivity of the gas, exhibits a minimumin the strongly correlated regime. Here, the sound diffusivity approaches a universal quantum bound \hbar/m and the strongly correlated 2D Fermi gas thus realizes a nearly perfect fluid.In addition, I report on further related measurements performed in the course of this thesis, which were led by my coworkers N. Luick and L. Sobirey. We show that the 2D Fermi gas is phase coherent by realizing a Josephson junction in the homogeneous gas and observing Josephson oscillationsbetween two reservoirs separated by a thin barrier. When the barrier height is reduced to zero, these oscillations transform smoothly into sound waves. By dragging a lattice though the homogeneous system at variable velocities, we observe a critical velocity for the creation of excitations, proving thatthe system is superfluid. Here, the sound velocity determines the critical velocity for a large range of interaction strengths.Finally, I present the characterization of a novel d-wave Feshbach resonance in ultracold potassium 40 via measurements of the inelastic loss rate L(2) and via the dynamics of spin populations, led by my coworker T. Reimann. The experimental results are compared to theoretical predictions and we observe good agreement between the theoretical and experimental loss rates. The evolution of the spin populations is found to be consistent with the expected behavior for the theoretically predicted exit channel.
We provide a description of the dynamic structure factor of a homogeneous unitary Fermi gas at low momentum and low frequency, based on the dissipative two-fluid hydrodynamic theory. The viscous relaxation time is estimated and is used to determine the regime where the hydrodynamic theory is applicable and to understand the nature of sound waves in the density response near the superfluid phase transition. By collecting the best knowledge on the shear viscosity and thermal conductivity known so far, we calculate the various diffusion coefficients and obtain the damping width of the (first and second) sounds. We find that the damping width of the first sound is greatly enhanced across the superfluid transition and very close to the transition the second sound might be resolved in the density response for the transferred momentum up to half of Fermi momentum. Our work is motivated by the recent measurement of the local dynamic structure factor at low momentum at Swinburne University of Technology and the ongoing experiment on sound attenuation of a homogeneous unitary Fermi gas at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. We discuss how the measurement of the velocity and damping width of the sound modes in low-momentum dynamic structure factor may lead to an improved determination of the universal superfluid density, shear viscosity, and thermal conductivity of a unitary Fermi gas.
Transport of strongly interacting fermions is crucial for the properties of modern materials, nuclear fission, the merging of neutron stars, and the expansion of the early Universe. Here, we observe a universal quantum limit of diffusivity in a homogeneous, strongly interacting atomic Fermi gas by studying sound propagation and its attenuation through the coupled transport of momentum and heat. In the normal state, the sound diffusivity D monotonically decreases upon lowering the temperature, in contrast to the diverging behavior of weakly interacting Fermi liquids. Below the superfluid transition temperature, D attains a universal value set by the ratio of Planck's constant and the particle mass. Our findings inform theories of fermion transport, with relevance for hydrodynamic flow of electrons, neutrons, and quarks.
At low temperatures, elementary excitations of a one-dimensional quantum liquid form a gas that can move as a whole with respect to the center of mass of the system. This internal motion attenuates at exponentially long time scales. As a result, in a broad range of frequencies, the liquid is described by two-fluid hydrodynamics, and the system supports two sound modes. The physical nature of the two sounds depends on whether the particles forming the quantum liquid have a spin degree of freedom. For particles with spin, the modes are analogous to the first and second sound modes in superfluid 4He, which are the waves of density and entropy, respectively. When dissipative processes are taken into account, we find that at low frequencies, the second sound is transformed into heat diffusion, while the first sound mode remains weakly damped and becomes the ordinary sound. In a spinless liquid, the entropy and density oscillations are strongly coupled and the resulting sound modes are hybrids of the first and second sound. As the frequency is lowered and dissipation processes become important, the crossover to a single-fluid regime occurs in two steps. First the hybrid modes transform into predominantly density and entropy waves, similar to the first and second sound, and then the density wave transforms to the ordinary sound and the entropy wave becomes a heat-diffusion mode. Finally, we account for the dissipation due to viscosity and intrinsic thermal conductivity of the gas of excitations, which controls attenuation of the sound modes at high frequencies.