To describe the tunneling dynamics of a stack of two-dimensional fermionic superfluids in an optical potential, we derive an effective action functional from a path integral treatment. This effective action leads in the saddle point approximation to equations of motion for the density and the phase of the superfluid Fermi gas in each layer. In the strong coupling limit (where bosonic molecules are formed) these equations reduce to a discrete nonlinear Schr\"odinger equation, where the molecular tunneling amplitude is reduced for large binding energies. In the weak coupling (BCS) regime, we study the evolution of the stacked superfluids and derive an approximate analytical expression for the oscillation frequency of the center of mass in an external harmonic potential. In both the weak and intermediate coupling regimes, the detection of the Josephson oscillations described by our path integral formalism constitutes experimental evidence for the fermionic superfluid regime.
To describe the tunneling dynamics of a stack of two-dimensional fermionic superfluids in an optical potential, we derive an effective action functional from a path integral treatment. This effective action leads in the saddle point approximation to equations of motion for the density and the phase of the superfluid Fermi gas in each layer. In the strong coupling limit (where bosonic molecules are formed) these equations reduce to a discrete nonlinear Schr"odinger equation, where the molecular tunneling amplitude is reduced for large binding energies. In the weak coupling (BCS) regime, we study the evolution of the stacked superfluids and derive an approximate analytical expression for the oscillation frequency of the center of mass in an external harmonic potential. In both the weak and intermediate coupling regimes, the detection of the Josephson oscillations described by our path integral formalism constitutes experimental evidence for the fermionic superfluid regime.
In this paper, we study the interaction-modulated tunneling dynamics of a Bose-Fermi superfluid mixture, where a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) with weak repulsive interaction is confined in a symmetric deep double-well potential and an equally populated two-component Fermi gas in a harmonic potential symmetrically is positioned in the center of the double-well potential. The tunneling between the two wells is modulated by fermions trapped in a harmonic potential. When the temperature is adequately low and the bosonic particle number is adequately large, we can employ the mean-field theory to describe the evolution of the BEC in the double-well potential through the time-dependent Gross-Pitaevskii equation. For the Fermi gas in the harmonic potential trap, we consider the case where the inter-fermion interaction is tuned on the deep Bose-Einstein condensate of the inter-fermion Feshbach resonance, where two fermions of spin-up and spin-down form a two-body bound state. Within the regime, the Fermi gas is well described by a condensate of these fermionic dimers, and hence can be simulated as well by a Gross-Pitaevskii equation of dimers. The inter-species interactions couple the dynamics of the two species, which results in interesting features in the tunneling oscillations. The dynamic equations of the BEC in the double-well potential is described by a two-mode approximation. Coupling it with time-dependent Gross-Pitaevskii equation of the harmonically potential trapped molecular BEC, we numerically investigate the dynamical evolution of the Boson-Fermi hybrid system under different initial conditions. It is found that the interaction among fermions in a harmonic potential leads to strong non-linearity in the oscillations of the bosons in the double-well potential and enriches the tunneling dynamics of the bosons. Especially, it strengthens macroscopic quantum self-trapping. And the macroscopic quantum self-trapping can be expressed in three forms: the phase tends to be negative and monotonically decreases with time, the phase evolves with time, and the phase tends to be positive and increases monotonically with time. This means that it is possible the tunneling dynamics of the BEC in double-well potential is adjustable. Our results can be verified experimentally in a Bose-Fermi superfluid mixture by varying different interaction parameters via Feshbach resonance and confinement-induced resonance.
We derive the low-energy effective action for three-dimensional superfluid Fermi systems in the strong-coupling limit, where superfluidity originates from Bose-Einstein condensation of composite bosons. Taking into account density and pairing fluctuations on the same footing, we show that the effective action involves only the fermion density ${\ensuremath{\rho}}_{\mathbf{r}}$ and its conjugate variable, the phase ${\ensuremath{\theta}}_{\mathbf{r}}$ of the pairing order parameter ${\ensuremath{\Delta}}_{\mathbf{r}}$. We recover the standard action of a Bose superfluid of density ${\ensuremath{\rho}}_{\mathbf{r}}∕2$, where the bosons have a mass mB=2m and interact via a repulsive contact potential with amplitude ${g}_{B}=4\ensuremath{\pi}{a}_{B}∕{m}_{B},{a}_{B}=2a$ (a the s-wave scattering length associated to the fermion-fermion interaction in vacuum). For lattice models, the derivation of the effective action is based on the mapping of the attractive Hubbard model onto the Heisenberg model in a uniform magnetic field, and a coherent state path integral representation of the partition function. The effective description of the Fermi superfluid in the strong-coupling limit is a Bose-Hubbard model with an intersite hopping amplitude tB=J∕2 and an on-site repulsive interaction UB=2Jz, where J=4t2∕U (t and $\ensuremath{-}U$ are the intersite hopping amplitude and the on-site attraction in the (fermionic) Hubbard model, z the number of nearest-neighbor sites).
The nonlinear Landau-Zener tunneling and the nonlinear Rabi oscillations of superfluid Fermi gases between Bloch bands in an accelerating optical lattice are discussed. Within the hydrodynamic theory and a two-level model, the tunneling probability of superfluid Fermi gases between Bloch bands is obtained. We find that, as the system crosses from the Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) side to the BCS side, the tunneling rate is closely related to the particle density: when the density is smaller (larger) than a critical value, the tunneling rate at unitarity is larger (smaller) than that in the BEC limit. This is well explained in terms of an effective interaction and an effective potential. Furthermore, the nonlinear Rabi oscillations of superfluid Fermi gases between the bands are discussed by imposing a periodic modulation on the level bias and the strength of the lattice. Analytical expressions of the critical density for suppressing or enhancing the Rabi oscillations are obtained. It is shown that, as the system crosses from the BEC side to the BCS side, the critical density strongly depends on the modulation parameters (i.e., the modulation amplitude and the modulation frequency). For a fixed density, a high-frequency or low-frequency modulation can suppress or enhance the Rabi oscillations both at unitarity and in the BEC limit. For an intermediate modulation frequency, the Rabi oscillations are chaotic along the entire BEC-BCS crossover, especially, on the BCS side. Interestingly, we find that the modulation of the lattice strength only with an intermediate modulation frequency has significant effect on the Rabi oscillations both in the BEC limit and at unitarity; that is, an intermediate-frequency modulation can enhance the Rabi oscillations, especially on the BCS side.
We investigate the macroscopic quantum tunneling of fermionic superfluids in the two-dimensional BCS-BEC crossover by using an effective tunneling energy which explicitly depends on the condensate fraction and the chemical potential of the system. We compare the mean-field effective tunneling energy with the beyond-mean-field one, finding that the mean-field tunneling energy is not reliable in the BEC regime of the crossover. Then we solve the Josephson equations of the population imbalance and the relative phase, calculating the frequency of tunneling oscillation both in the linear regime and in the nonlinear one. Our results show that the Josephson frequency is higher in the intermediate regime of the BCS-BEC crossover due to the peculiar behavior of the effective tunneling energy in the crossover.
The spectrum of collective (pair) excitations in the ground state of a dilute twodimensional (2D) attractive Fermi-gas is studied within the functional integral formalism. The linearized equations for the fluctuations about the non-trivial saddle point are analyzed for all coupling regimes, which are characterized by the ratio ε 0 /ε F , where ε 0 is the two-fermion binding energy and ε F is the Fermi energy. The approximation takes into account propagation of the fluctuations and their interaction with the condensate. In the strong-coupling, or ‘;Bosegas’, regime (ε 0 /ε F > 1) the spectrum is continuous and has the Bogolubov form, but in the weak-coupling limit (ε 0 /ε F «1) there are two types of excitations (different from the two-fermion scattering states): (i) long-wavelength sound-like excitations with the cut-off at momentum q c ≃ l/ξ 0 (where ξ 0 is the Cooper pair size), and (ii) pair excitations with q ≃ (8 m μ) ½ , where μ is the chemical potential and m is the fermion mass. The crossover between weakand strong-coupling behavior of the excitation spectrum is found to occur at the value of the coupling parameter ε 0 /ε F ≃¼. Introduction Since the discovery of high- T c superconductivity there has been growing interest in studying 2D Fermi gases with attractive interaction, especially in the crossover regime, when the pair size ξ 0 is of the order of the interparticle distance. The importance of such a model, which can be regarded as a semiphenomenological model of a 2D superconductor, is highlighted by experimental evidence that the high- T c superconductors, most of which have a layered structure, have a short coherence length, so that k F ξ 0 ≃1, where k F is the Fermi momentum.