Evolution of fermionic superfluid across the crossover from three to two dimensions

Martin W. Zwierlein

Tobias Dornheim, Alexey V. Filinov, M. Bönitz

We analyze the superfluid crossover of harmonically confined bosons with long-range interaction in both two and three dimensions in a broad parameter range from weak to strong coupling. We observe that the onset of superfluidity occurs in three dimensions at significantly lower temperatures compared to that in two dimensions. This is demonstrated to be a quantum degeneracy effect. In addition, the spatial distribution of superfluidity across the shells of the clusters is investigated. It is found that superfluidity is substantially reduced in the outer layers due to increased correlation effects.

Leslie O. Baksmaty, Satyen Bhongale, Han Pu +1 more

Sarang Gopalakrishnan

A superfluid-insulator transition is known to occur in strongly disordered Fermi gases, in both the BCS and BEC regimes; here, we address the properties of this transition across the BEC-BCS crossover. We argue that the critical disorder strength at which superfluidity is lost changes non-monotonically with detuning from Feshbach resonance, and that a reentrant superfluid phase arises for detunings near the fermionic mobility edge. Our analysis of the intermediate regime is quantitatively valid for narrow resonances and near four dimensions, and provides a simple physical picture of this regime, in terms of two distinct but coexisting insulators.

Waseem Bakr, Lawrence W. Cheuk, Mark Ku +6 more

Strongly interacting gases of ultracold fermions have become an amazingly rich test-bed for many-body theories of fermionic matter. Here we present our recent experiments on these systems. Firstly, we discuss high-precision measurements on the thermodynamics of a strongly interacting Fermi gas across the superfluid transition. The onset of superfluidity is directly observed in the compressibility, the chemical potential, the entropy, and the heat capacity. Our measurements provide benchmarks for current many-body theories on strongly interacting fermions. Secondly, we have studied the evolution of fermion pairing from three to two dimensions in these gases, relating to the physics of layered superconductors. In the presence of p-wave interactions, Fermi gases are predicted to display toplogical superfluidity carrying Majorana edge states. Two possible avenues in this direction are discussed, our creation and direct observation of spin-orbit coupling in Fermi gases and the creation of fermionic molecules of 23Na 40K that will feature strong dipolar interactions in their absolute ground state.