Out-of-equilibrium phenomena and Transport in Cold Atoms

Daniel Lobser, Andrew E. S. Barentine, Eric Cornell +1 more

Vanderlei Salvador Bagnato

Chih-Chun Chien, Fred Cooper, E.A.H. Timmermans +2 more

Chunyuan SHAN, Xiaoyu Dai, Boyang Liu

Transport measurement is an important tool for studying the fundamental properties of matter. Among them, transport through quantum point contacts is a very interesting phenomenon in mesoscopic physics. In non-interacting or weakly interacting Fermi systems, the conductivity exhibits quantized behavior as a function of gate voltage, revealing the quantum nature of matter. In recent years, transport in cold atomic systems has become one of the frontiers in this field. Cold atomic systems have highly are controllable and exhibit many novel phases, leading to new experimental phenomena that cannot be observed in traditional material physics. This article will review some of the latest experimental progress in transport through quantum point contacts in cold atomic Fermi gases, and will also introduce the non-equilibrium field theoretical methods commonly used to study this system.

Stefan Kirchner, Lijun Zhu, Qimiao Si A

Kyeong Ock Chong, Jung-Ryul Kim, Jinuk Kim +3 more

Abstract Non-equilibrium dynamics expands our understanding on physical processes based on the conventional equilibrium physics. In particular, non-equilibrium steady states with continuous flow among them have drawn much interest related to various biochemical processes, biomolecular motors, and high-temperature quantum entanglement as well as Bose–Einstein condensates. Here we report observation of a non-equilibrium steady states of atoms achieved in a hybrid of a moving optical lattice and a surrounding cold atom cloud in a phase-stabilized magneto-optical trap. A part of atoms are localized and transported in the moving optical lattice and the rest are not localized in the lattice while trapped as a cold cloud of atoms. These motional states coexist with continuous transition between them. Our model calculations well reproduce the key features of the experimental observations including stepwise transitions, confirming the existence of a non-equilibrium steady state with characteristics of asymmetric simple exclusion process in the cold atom system.