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Superfluid and superconducting transitions in low-dimensional systems

Karén G. Balabanyan

Published Jan 1, 2007• 1 citation
OpenAlex

Abstract

Superfluid and superconducting phase transitions of interacting bosons are observed in diverse physical systems such as helium, superconducting materials, ultra-cold atomic gases, etc. For all these systems one-, two-, and three-dimensional (1D, 2D, and 3D) realizations are experimentally accessible. However, the current experimental focus is shifting to the low dimensional systems (e.g., films and wires) due to facilitated measurement techniques and a constant demand of technological applications. From a theoretical standpoint large fluctuations in 1D and 2D systems make them a challenging problem, especially when disorder is present. Here we study peculiarities associated with disorder in low-dimensional cases. Specifically, we are interested in the class of the systems where superfluid or superconducting transitions can be mapped to the finite temperature 2D superfluid-normal Kosterlitz-Thouless (KT) transition: (a) 2D bosonic system with a strong diagonal disorder, (b) 1D system of lattice bosons with off-diagonal disorder in the limit of large integer filling factor at zero temperature, and (c) 3D layered superconductors with no tunnelling between layers in zero external magnetic field.

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Superfluid and superconducting phase transitions of interacting bosons are observed in diverse physical systems such as helium, superconducting materials, ultra-cold atomic gases, etc. For all these systems one-, two-, and three-dimensional (1D, 2D, and 3D) realizations are experimentally accessible. However, the current experimental focus is shifting to the low dimensional systems (e.g., films and wires) due to facilitated measurement techniques and a constant demand of technological applications. From a theoretical standpoint large fluctuations in 1D and 2D systems make them a challenging problem, especially when disorder is present. Here we study peculiarities associated with disorder in low-dimensional cases. Specifically, we are interested in the class of the systems where superfluid or superconducting transitions can be mapped to the finite temperature 2D superfluid-normal Kosterlitz-Thouless (KT) transition: (a) 2D bosonic system with a strong diagonal disorder, (b) 1D system of lattice bosons with off-diagonal disorder in the limit of large integer filling factor at zero temperature, and (c) 3D layered superconductors with no tunnelling between layers in zero external magnetic field.
We study the phase-locking transition of two coupled low-dimensional superfluids, either two-dimensional superfluids at finite temperature, or one-dimensional superfluids at zero temperature. We find that the superfluids have a strong tendency to phase-lock. The phase-locking is accompanied by a sizeable increase of the transition temperature T c (in 2D systems) of the resulting double-layer superfluid to thermal Bose gas transition, compared to the Kosterlitz-Thouless temperature T KT of the uncoupled 2D systems, which suggests a plausible way of observing the Kibble-Zurek mechanism in two-dimensional cold atom systems by rapidly varying the tunneling rate between the superfluids. If there is also interaction between atoms in different layers present we find additional phases, while no sliding phase, characterized by order or quasi–long-range order (QLRO) either in the symmetric or the antisymmetric sector of the system.
Using large-scale quantum Monte Carlo simulations of lattice bosonic models, we precisely investigate the effect of weak Josephson tunneling between 2D superfluid or superconducting layers. In the clean case, the Kosterlitz-Thouless transition immediately turns into 3DXY, with phase coherence and superflow in all spatial directions, and a strong enhancement of the critical temperature. However, when disorder is present, rare regions fluctuations can lead to an intermediate finite-temperature phase —the so-called sliding regime— where only 2D superflow occurs within the layers without any transverse superfluid coherence, while a true 3D Bose-Einstein condensate exists. Critical properties of such an unconventional regime are carefully investigated.
Thermal fluctuations, the microscopic fluctuations of things due to their temperature, counteract order in many-body systems. Thermal fluctuations often lead to high-temperature disordered phases and low-temperature ordered ones. In lower dimensions, thermal fluctuations are relatively stronger with two-dimensional materials being just on the brink of thermal fluctuations destroying their order. Twodimensional materials therefore display unique behaviour, for example undergoing a superfluid phase transition driven by point-like topological defects. In this work, we realise two-dimensional bosonic quantum gases of the isotope Rb-87 in precisely controlled potentials to study how quantum-tunnelling and spatially disordered potentials affect the phases of matter they form. We also present a new scheme for cooling quantum gases directly in the finely tuned radiofrequency-dressed traps confining the gases in our experiments. To study tunnel-coupled gases, this work utilises a novel method to read out information from bilayer quantum gas experiments by analysing noise patterns arising from interference effects. We find that quantum-tunnelling between the two layers in a bilayer system can cause both layers to remain superfluid at higher temperatures than without quantum tunnelling. We compare our results to predictions using renormalisation-group theory and numerical simulations. We experimentally observe the predicted double-layer superfluid phase, a novel phase where the U(1) symmetry of the relative phase is broken and relative excitations are suppressed. Separately, we investigate the topological Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless phase transition in disordered two-dimensional Bose gases. We find that such systems can be driven across this phase transition by increasing the strength of an applied disordered potential. We experimentally map out the phase diagram for a continuous 2D Bose gas in the presence of disorder, which has not previously been carried out to the best of our knowledge. We find that the presence of disorder increases the number of topological defects at a given temperature while reducing the rate at which the number of defects increases with temperature. The experimental results for 2D disordered Bose gases are in qualitative agreement with numerical simulations for the parameter regime studied.
The properties of phase transitions and the types of order present in the low-temperature states of matter are fundamentally dependent on the dimensionality of physical systems. Generally, highly ordered states are more robust in higher dimensions, while thermal and quantum fluctuations, which favour disordered states, play a more important role in lower dimensions. The case of a two-dimensional (2d) Bose fluid is particularly fascinating because of its "marginal" behaviour. In an infinite uniform 2d fluid thermal fluctuations at any non-zero temperature are strong enough to destroy the fully ordered state associated with Bose--Einstein condensation, but are not strong enough to suppress superfluidity in an interacting system at low, but non-zero temperatures. Further, the presence of residual "quasi-long-range" order at low temperatures leads to an interesting interplay between superfluidity and condensation in all experimentally relevant finite-size systems. In these notes we give an introduction to the physics of 2d Bose fluids from an atomic physics perspective. Our goal is to summarize the recent progress in theoretical understanding and experimental investigation of ultra-cold atomic gases confined to 2d geometry, and we also hope to provide a useful introduction to these systems for researchers working on related topics in other fields of physics.
We study the superfluid-insulator transition in a one-dimensional system of interacting bosons, modeled as a disordered Josephson array, using a strong-randomness real-space renormalization-group technique. Unlike perturbative methods, this approach does not suffer from run-away flows and allows us to study the complete phase diagram. We show that the superfluid-insulator transition is always Kosterlitz-Thouless like in the way that length and time scales diverge at the critical point. Interestingly however, we find that the transition at strong disorder occurs at a nonuniversal value of the Luttinger parameter, which depends on the disorder strength. This result places the transition in a universality class different from the weak disorder transition first analyzed by Giamarchi and Schulz [Europhys. Lett. 3, 1287 (1987)]. While the details of the disorder potential are unimportant at the critical point, the type of disorder does influence the properties of the insulating phases. We find three classes of insulators which arise for different classes of disorder potential. For disorder only in the charging energies and Josephson coupling constants, at integer filling we find an incompressible but gapless Mott-glass phase. If both integer and half-integer filling factors are allowed then the corresponding phase is a random-singlet insulator, which has a divergent compressibility. Finally in a generic disorder potential the insulator is a Bose glass with a finite compressibility.
In this thesis, we study the quantum phase transition triggered by an external random po- tential in ultra-cold low-dimensional weakly-interacting Bose gases at zero temperature. In one-dimensional systems, the quantum phases are characterized by the decay at long-range of the one-body density matrix. This decay exhibits an algebraic behaviour in the superfluid quasi-condensed phase while in the insulating Bose glass phase this it becomes exponen- tial, signaling the complete loss of coherence in the system. In two-dimensional systems, a characterization based on the long-range behaviour of the one-body density matrix appears to be highly demanding from a computational point of view. We therefore characterized the superfluid-insulator transition in two-dimensional systems by the low-energy behaviour of the cumulative density of states of the Bogoliubov excitations. While in the superfluid condensed phase this quantity grows as the square of the excitation energy in agreement with the existence of a finite velocity of sound, in the insulating Bose glass phase this power law is less than quadratic. This study is performed in the framework of an extended Bogoliubov approach properly adapted to treat low-dimensional Bose gases. Using a systematic numerical study, we draw the interaction-disorder phase diagrams of the superfluid-insulator transition in 1D and 2D. The phase boundary follows two different power- laws depending on the length scales characterizing the spatial correlations of the disorder and the strength of interactions. The power-law exponents were found to be in agreement with the ones predicted by scaling arguments, both in the white noise and the Thomas-Fermi regimes. In the two-dimensional system, the classical percolation threshold in the Thomas-Fermi limit was found to overestimate the critical disorder below which the onset of superfluidity should be observed for a given interaction strength.