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Laser Physics

Coupling between collective motion and quasiparticle excitations in superfluid trapped Fermi gases

Mi­chael Urban

Published Apr 1, 2009• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

There are several situations in which the collective motion of a superfluid Fermi gas is coupled to quasiparticle excitations. Quasiparticle excitations are, for example, present at finite temperature, but also at zero temperature in the case of a rotating trap. In this paper, I present a semiclassical description of such systems, where the superfluid component is described by hydrodynamics while the normal component, formed by the quasiparticles, is described by a transport equation similar to the Vlasov equation. The coupling between the two components generates a strong damping of the collective modes. As applications of the semiclassical theory, the case of a rotating trap and several collective modes (quadrupole and scissors modes) of the trapped gas are discussed.

DOI
10.1134/s1054660x09040203

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There are several situations in which the collective motion of a superfluid Fermi gas is coupled to quasiparticle excitations. Quasiparticle excitations are, for example, present at finite temperature, but also at zero temperature in the case of a rotating trap. In this paper, I present a semiclassical description of such systems, where the superfluid component is described by hydrodynamics while the normal component, formed by the quasiparticles, is described by a transport equation similar to the Vlasov equation. The coupling between the two components generates a strong damping of the collective modes. As applications of the semiclassical theory, the case of a rotating trap and several collective modes (quadrupole and scissors modes) of the trapped gas are discussed.
At finite temperature, the hydrodynamic collective modes of superfluid trapped Fermi gases are coupled to the motion of the normal component, which in the BCS limit behaves like a collisionless normal Fermi gas. The coupling between the superfluid and the normal components is treated in the framework of a semiclassical transport theory for the quasiparticle-distribution function, combined with a hydrodynamic equation for the collective motion of the superfluid component. We develop a numerical test-particle method for solving these equations in the linear-response regime. As a first application we study the temperature dependence of the collective quadrupole mode of a Fermi gas in a spherical trap. The coupling between the superfluid collective motion and the quasiparticles leads to a rather strong damping of the hydrodynamic mode already at very low temperatures. At higher temperatures the spectrum has a two-peak structure, the second peak corresponding to the quadrupole mode in the normal phase.
We discuss collective monopole and quadrupole excitations of a collisionless gas of trapped Fermionic atoms in the superfluid BCS phase, comparing the fully microscopic Bogoliubov--de Gennes and quasiparticle random-phase approximation method with widely used semiclassical methods. In particular, the microscopic treatment allows us to address the questions of temperature dependence and nontrivial dependence on the trap parameters, which cannot be answered within the semiclassical approach. The main result concerning the temperature dependence is a strong Landau damping at intermediate temperature, which disappears in the limits of zero and critical temperature. However, even at zero temperature, considerable deviations from superfluid hydrodynamics are found if the trap frequency is of the same order of magnitude as the pairing gap.
We derive semiclassical transport equations for a trapped atomic Fermi gas in the BCS phase at temperatures between zero and the superfluid transition temperature. These equations interpolate between the two well-known limiting cases of superfluid hydrodynamics at zero temperature and the Vlasov equation at the critical one. The linearized version of these equations, valid for small deviations from equilibrium, is worked out and applied to two simple examples where analytical solutions can be found: a sound wave in a uniform medium and the quadrupole excitation in a spherical harmonic trap. In spite of some simplifying approximations, the main qualitative results of quantum mechanical calculations are reproduced, which are the different frequencies of the quadrupole mode at zero and the critical temperature and strong Landau damping at intermediate temperatures. In addition we suggest a numerical method for solving the semiclassical equations without further approximations.
The excitation spectra of the radial quadrupole and scissors modes of ultracold Fermi gases in elongated traps are studied across the BCS superfluid-normal phase transition in the framework of a transport theory for quasiparticles. In the limit of zero temperature, this theory reproduces the results of superfluid hydrodynamics, while in the opposite limit, above the critical temperature, it reduces to the collisionless Vlasov equation. In the intermediate temperature range, the excitation spectra have two or three broad peaks, respectively, which are roughly situated at hydrodynamic and collisionless frequencies, and whose strength is shifted from the hydrodynamic to the collisionless modes with increasing temperature. By fitting the time-dependent quadrupole deformation with a damped oscillation of a single frequency, we can understand the ``jump'' of the frequency of the radial quadrupole mode as a function of interaction strength which has recently been reported by the Innsbruck group.
We consider the collective mode spectrum of a normal Fermi gas in a spherical harmonic trap. Using a self-consistent random-phase approximation, we systematically examine the effects of the two-body interactions on modes of various symmetries. For weak coupling, where the spectrum is shifted very little away from the ideal gas case, a sum-rule approach is shown to work well. For stronger coupling, the interplay between the single particle and collective excitations causes effects such as mode splitting and Landau damping. A finite low-frequency response present at stronger coupling is predicted for the quadrupole mode. Finally, we briefly discuss the effect of a finite temperature on the spectrum, and the excitation of higher collective modes.
We study the transition from the hydrodynamic to the collisionless regime in collective modes of three- and two-dimensional Fermi gases by using the semiclassical Boltzmann equation. We use direct numerical simulations as well as the method of phase-space moments to solve the Boltzmann equation and show that the restriction to second-order moments is not accurate enough. By including higher-order moments, we can successfully describe the hydrodynamic to collisionless transition observed in the quadrupole mode in three-dimensional Fermi gases and the frequency shift and damping of the sloshing mode due to the anharmonic shape of the experimental trap potential. In the case of two-dimensional Fermi gases, however, the strong damping of the quadrupole mode observed in a recent experiment remains unexplained.