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Scientific Reports

Thermal conductivity of an ultracold Fermi gas in the BCS-BEC crossover

Hang Zhou, Yong-li Ma

Published Jan 13, 2021• 8 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Recent experiments on sound waves in a unitary Fermi gas reveal many transport properties about strongly interacting fermions. Sound propagates through the coupling of momentum and heat transport, and attenuates strongly with the presence of a phase transition. In this work, focusing on the temperature regimes near and below the superfluid critical temperature [Formula: see text] in the BCS-BEC crossover, we present a Kubo-based microscopic calculation of thermal conductivity [Formula: see text], which has not attracted much attention compared to the shear viscosity. Our approach primarily addresses the contributions of the fermionic quasiparticles to thermal transport and our results return to the kinetic descriptions at high temperatures. [Formula: see text] drops upon crossing the pseudogap temperature [Formula: see text], and its temperature dependence changes below [Formula: see text]. The drops become more pronounced on the weakly coupled BCS side, where the Pauli blocking causes the upturn of [Formula: see text] above [Formula: see text]. Our calculations fit well with the sound measurement on the damping rate.

DOI
10.1038/s41598-020-79010-w

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Recent experiments on sound waves in a unitary Fermi gas reveal many transport properties about strongly interacting fermions. Sound propagates through the coupling of momentum and heat transport, and attenuates strongly with the presence of a phase transition. In this work, focusing on the temperature regimes near and below the superfluid critical temperature [Formula: see text] in the BCS-BEC crossover, we present a Kubo-based microscopic calculation of thermal conductivity [Formula: see text], which has not attracted much attention compared to the shear viscosity. Our approach primarily addresses the contributions of the fermionic quasiparticles to thermal transport and our results return to the kinetic descriptions at high temperatures. [Formula: see text] drops upon crossing the pseudogap temperature [Formula: see text], and its temperature dependence changes below [Formula: see text]. The drops become more pronounced on the weakly coupled BCS side, where the Pauli blocking causes the upturn of [Formula: see text] above [Formula: see text]. Our calculations fit well with the sound measurement on the damping rate.
We compute the thermal conductivity and sound attenuation length of a dilute atomic Fermi gas in the framework of kinetic theory. Above the critical temperature for superfluidity, Tc{T}_{c}Tc​, the quasiparticles are fermions, whereas below Tc{T}_{c}Tc​, the dominant excitations are phonons. We calculate the thermal conductivity in both cases. We find that at unitarity the thermal conductivity $\ensuremath{\kappa}$ in the normal phase scales as $\ensuremath{\kappa}\ensuremath{\propto}{T}^{3/2}$. In the superfluid phase we find $\ensuremath{\kappa}\ensuremath{\propto}{T}^{2}$. At high temperature the Prandtl number, the ratio of the momentum and thermal diffusion constants, is 2/3. The ratio increases as the temperature is lowered. As a consequence we expect sound attenuation in the normal phase just above Tc{T}_{c}Tc​ to be dominated by shear viscosity. We comment on the possibility of extracting the shear viscosity of the dilute Fermi gas at unitarity using measurements of the sound absorption length.
We theoretically investigate the shear viscosity ηηη in the BCS-BEC crossover regime of an ultracold Fermi gas with a Feshbach resonance. Within the framework of the strong-coupling self-consistent TTT-matrix approximation, we examine how a strong pairing interaction associated with a Feshbach resonance affects this transport coefficient, in the normal state above the superfluid phase transition temperature TcT_{\rm c}Tc​. We show that, while ηηη diverges in both the weak-coupling BCS and strong-coupling BEC limits, it becomes small in the unitary regime. The minimum of ηηη is obtained, not at the unitarity, but slightly in the strong-coupling BEC side. This deviation is consistent with the recent experiment on a 6^66Li Fermi gas. In the weak-coupling BCS regime, we also find that ηηη exhibits anomalous temperature dependence near TcT_{\rm c}Tc​, which is deeply related to the pseudogap phenomenon originating form strong pairing fluctuations.
Strongly interacting two-dimensional Fermi systems are one of the great remaining challenges in many-body physics due to the interplay of strong local correlations and enhanced long-range fluctuations. Here, we probe the thermodynamic and transport properties of a 2D Fermi gas across the BEC-BCS crossover by studying the propagation and damping of sound modes. We excite particle currents by imprinting a phase step onto homogeneous Fermi gases trapped in a box potential and extract the speed of sound from the frequency of the resulting density oscillations. We measure the speed of sound across the BEC-BCS crossover and compare the resulting dynamic measurement of the equation of state both to a static measurement based on recording density profiles and to quantum Monte Carlo calculations and find reasonable agreement between all three. We also measure the damping of the sound mode, which is determined by the shear and bulk viscosities as well as the thermal conductivity of the gas. We find that the damping is minimal in the strongly interacting regime and the diffusivity approaches the universal quantum bound ℏ/m of a perfect fluid.
A mechanism is proposed to explain the puzzling damping of collective excitations, which was recently observed in the experiments of strongly interacting Fermi gases below the superfluid critical temperature on the fermionic (BCS) side of Feshbach resonance. Sound velocity, superfluid density, and damping rate are calculated with effective field theory. We find that a dominant damping process is due to the interaction between superfluid phonons and thermally excited fermionic quasiparticles, in contrast to the previously proposed pair-breaking mechanism. Results from our effective model are compared quantitatively with recent experimental findings, showing a good agreement.
We investigate strong-coupling effects on normal-state properties of an ultracold Fermi gas. Within the framework of TTT-matrix approximation in terms of pairing fluctuations, we calculate the single-particle density of states (DOS), as well as the spectral weight, over the entire BCS--Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) crossover region above the superfluid phase-transition temperature Tc{T}_{\text{c}}Tc​. Starting from the weak-coupling BCS regime, we show that the so-called pseudogap develops in DOS above Tc{T}_{\text{c}}Tc​, which becomes remarkable in the crossover region. The pseudogap structure continuously changes into a fully gapped one in the strong-coupling BEC regime, where the gap energy is directly related to the binding energy of tightly bound molecules. We determine the pseudogap temperature ${T}^{\ensuremath{\ast}}$ where the dip structure in DOS vanishes. The value of ${T}^{\ensuremath{\ast}}$ is shown to be very different from another characteristic temperature ${T}^{\ensuremath{\ast}\ensuremath{\ast}}$ where a BCS-type double-peak structure disappears in the spectral weight. While one finds ${T}^{\ensuremath{\ast}}>{T}^{\ensuremath{\ast}\ensuremath{\ast}}$ in the BCS regime, ${T}^{\ensuremath{\ast}\ensuremath{\ast}}$ becomes higher than ${T}^{\ensuremath{\ast}}$ in the crossover region and BEC regime. Including this, we determine the pseudogap region in the phase diagram of ultracold Fermi gases. Our results would be useful in the search for the pseudogap region in ultracold 6Li^{6}\text{L}\text{i}6Li and 40K^{40}\text{K}40K Fermi gases.
We theoretically investigate the specific heat at constant volume C V in the BCS(Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer)-BEC(Bose-Einstein-condensation)-crossover regime of an ultracold Fermi gas, below the superfluid phase transition temperature T c . Within the strong-coupling framework developed by Nozières and Schmitt-Rink, we show that the temperature dependence of C V drastically changes as one passes through the crossover region, and is sensitive to strong fluctuations in the Cooper channel near the unitarity limit. We also compare our results to a recent experiment on a 6 Li unitary Fermi gas. Since fluctuation effects are a crucial key in the BCS-BEC-crossover phenomenon, our results would be helpful in considering how the fermionic BCS superfluid changes into BEC with increasing the interaction strength, from the viewpoint of specific heat.