Collective dipole oscillations in a mixture of Bose and Fermi superfluids in the BCS–BEC crossover

Abstract

We present a study for the collective dipole oscillations of a mixture of Bose and Fermi superfluids in the crossover from Bardeen–Cooper–Schrieffer (BCS) superfluid to a molecular Bose–Einstein condensate (BEC) in the ENS experimental setup (Ferrier-Barbut et al 2014 Science 345 1035). The dynamics of the double superfluidity is described by coupled time-dependent order-parameter equations, which are Gross–Pitaevskii equations for the Bose superfluid, coupled to the order-parameter equation including the equation of state fitting from the experimental data for the Fermi superfluid in the BCS–BEC crossover. The numerical simulations show that due to the boson–fermion interaction, the frequencies of the dipole oscillations of the Bose and Fermi superfluids are both downshifted and the frequency shifts increase monotonically from the BCS side to BEC side, which are in agreement with the experiment. We further study the dependencies of the frequency shifts on the oscillation amplitudes and the nonlinear effects, in which the Bose and Fermi superfliuds show different features. The frequency shifts of the Bose superfluid increase linearly as the oscillation amplitudes increase, while the frequency shifts of the Fermi superfluid show a quadratical increase. It is found that the intrinsic dipole oscillations of the Bose (Fermi) superfluid can be triggered by only boosting the Fermi (Bose) superfluid.