Diffusion plays a major role in describing how particles and heat move in any nonequilibrium system. The diffusion of quantum properties is not as well understood as the diffusion of classical properties, especially at low temperatures or high densities. Exploring the diffusion of the quantum property known as spin is beneficial for explaining quantum effects that arise at low temperatures or high densities, and this knowledge acquired could assist in the development of new ultra-low-power devices. This thesis examines spin diffusion at various temperatures and densities using the highly-tunable experimental platform of ultracold atoms. Around one million rubidium-87 atoms are cooled to nanokelvin temperatures to create an ultracold gas, where quantum interactions between atoms can significantly modify spin diffusion compared to classical diffusion. One-dimensional spin diffusion is observed for an initial two-domain spin profile. Remarkably, diffusion of this spin profile is slowed at temperatures above quantum degeneracy, where the ultracold gas is largely classical but with quantum collisions. We demonstrate that this slowing of spin diffusion is due to the presence of spin coherence between spin domains, and that the removal of coherence speeds up spin diffusion to classical timescales. Spin diffusion is further modified by applying a linear differential potential that can speed, slow, or stop spin diffusion of a two-domain spin profile. Differential potentials spatially alter the precession of spins, which then alters the spin-rotating quantum collisions that modify spin diffusion. For a linear differential potential with a specific sign and magnitude, stabilized spin domains in an ultracold gas are observed for 40 times longer than classical diffusion timescales. In addition to modifying spin diffusion with coherence and differential potentials, we demonstrate arbitrary control of one-dimensional spin diffusion using temporally varying differential potentials and three-domain spin profiles. These spin diffusion modifying techniques could be useful for manipulating spin in other nonequilibrium systems, and set the stage for simulating spin-based devices in ultracold atoms.

Dec 9, 20190 citations

The crossover from classical to quantum transport in a weakly-interacting Fermi gas

Hadrien Kurkjian

We present an exact solution of the quantum kinetic equation of a weakly interacting Fermi gas in the crossover from the degenerate Fermi-liquid regime to the classical Boltzmann gas. We construct families of orthogonal polynomials tailored to each angular momentum channel, enabling a fast and systematically improvable decomposition of the phase-space distribution. This approach yields accurate, non-variational predictions for the shear viscosity, thermal diffusivity, and spin diffusivity to leading order in the scattering length. We demonstrate that the commonly used relaxation-time approximation fails dramatically at low temperature--by up to 25%. Our method provides a numerically efficient framework for benchmarking transport in strongly correlated regimes and for simulating the kinetics of quantum gases beyond hydrodynamics.

cond-mat.quant-gasCross-listedarXiv:2512.17379Dec 22, 20250 citations