Frustrated phase separation in the momentum distribution of field-driven light-heavy Fermi-Fermi mixtures of ultracold atoms

Abstract

Time-of-flight images are a common tool in ultracold atomic experiments, employed to determine the quasimomentum distribution of the interacting particles. If one introduces a constant artificial electric field, then the quasimomentum distribution evolves in time as Bloch oscillations are generated in the system and then damped showing a complex series of patterns. Surprisingly, in different mass Fermi-Fermi mixtures, these patterns can survive for long times, and resemble the stability of the red spot of Jupiter in classical nonlinear hydrodynamics. In this work, we illustrate the rich phenomena that can be seen in these driven quantum systems.