BCS Regime Research Articles

Sound velocity peak and conformality in isospin QCD

We study zero temperature equations of state (EOS) in isospin QCD within a quark-meson model which is renormalizable and hence eliminates high density artifacts in models with the ultraviolet cutoff (e.g., Nambu-Jona-Lasinio type models models). The model exhibits a crossover transition of pion condensations from the Bose-Einstein-Condensation regime at low density to the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer regime at high density. The EOS stiffens quickly and approaches the quark matter regime at density significantly less than the density for pions to spatially overlap. The squared sound velocity cs2 develops a peak in the crossover region, and then gradually relaxes to the conformal value 1/3 from above, in contrast to the perturbative QCD results which predicts the approach from below. In the context of QCD computations, this opposite trend is in part due to the lack of gluon exchanges in our model, and also due to the nonperturbative power corrections arising from the condensates. We argue that with large power corrections the trace anomaly can be negative. Our EOS reproduces the qualitative trend of the lattice results from the BEC to the BCS regime, implying that the quark-meson model captures relevant effective degrees of freedom. The BCS gap in our model is Δ≃300 MeV in the quark matter domain, and naive application of the BCS relation for the critical temperature Tc≃0.57Δ yields the estimate Tc≃170 MeV, in good agreement with the lattice data. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Quasi-equilibrium polariton condensates in the non-linear regime and beyond

We investigate the many-body behavior of polaritons formed from electron-hole pairs strongly coupled to photons in a two-dimensional semiconductor microcavity. We use a microscopic mean-field BCS theory that describes polariton condensation in quasi-equilibrium across the full range of excitation densities. In the limit of vanishing density, we show that our theory recovers the exact single-particle properties of polaritons, while at low densities it captures non-linear polariton-polariton interactions within the Born approximation. For the case of highly screened contact interactions between charge carriers, we obtain analytic expressions for the equation of state of the many-body system. This allows us to show that there is a photon resonance at a chemical potential higher than the photon cavity energy, where the electron-hole pair correlations in the polariton condensate become universal and independent of the details of the carrier interactions. Comparing the effect of different ranged interactions between charge carriers, we find that the Rytova-Keldysh potential (relevant to transition metal dichalcogenides) offers the best prospect of reaching the BCS regime, where pairs strongly overlap and the minimum pairing gap occurs at finite momentum. Finally, going beyond thermal equilibrium, we argue that there are generically two polariton branches in the driven-dissipative system and we discuss the possibility of a density-driven exceptional point within our model.

Low-Lying Collective Excitations of Superconductors and Charged Superfluids

We investigate theoretically the momentum-dependent frequency and damping of low-lying collective excitations of superconductors and charged superfluids in the BCS–BEC crossover regime. The study is based on the Gaussian pair-and-density fluctuation method for the propagator of Gaussian fluctuations of the pair and density fields. Eigenfrequencies and damping rates are determined in a mutually consistent nonperturbative way as complex poles of the fluctuation propagator. Particular attention is paid to new features with respect to preceding theoretical studies, which were devoted to collective excitations of superconductors in the far BCS regime. We find that at a sufficiently strong coupling, new branches of collective excitations appear, which manifest different behavior as functions of the momentum and the temperature.

Phase diagrams for two-component D-wave fermion superfluids with density imbalance

Finite-temperature phase structures for asymmetric two-component D-wave fermion superfluids in the weak coupling BCS regime are investigated. The Fulde–Ferrell–Larkin-Ovchinnikov (FFLO) state becomes non-degenerate with the orientation of Cooper pair momentum due to the anisotropic pairing gap for D-wave pairing. The new parameter θ 0, corresponding to the orientation of Cooper pair momentum, greatly enriches the phase structures. Especially, the phase separation (PS) region in the phase diagram is significantly reduced comparing to that for S-wave pairing. Theoretically, the stability condition of solutions is equivalent to the positive definite Hessian matrix of free energy in the hyperplane defined by the number density constraints in the parameter space spanned by the average chemical potential μ, relative chemical potential h, paring gap Δ, pair momentum q, and θ 0. In addition, the stability condition of the superfluid density is essentially included in the positive definite Hessian matrix. Moreover, the positiveness of imbalance number susceptibility is always equivalent to the positiveness of the smaller eigenvalue λ − of the number susceptibility matrix. While the criteria ∂2Ω/∂Δ2 and against PS in previous studies are equivalent to λ − only under the prerequisite that the solution is a local minimum in the corresponding hyperplane.

Ground states of atomic Fermi gases in a two-dimensional optical lattice with and without population imbalance

We study the ground state phase diagram of population balanced and imbalanced ultracold atomic Fermi gases with a short range attractive interaction throughout the crossover from BCS to Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC), in a two-dimensional optical lattice (2DOL) comprised of two lattice and one continuum dimensions. We find that the mixing of lattice and continuum dimensions, together with population imbalance, has an extraordinary effect on pairing and the superfluidity of atomic Fermi gases. In the balanced case, the superfluid ground state prevails the majority of the phase space. However, for relatively small lattice hopping integral $t$ and large lattice constant $d$, a pair density wave (PDW) emerges unexpectedly at intermediate coupling strength, and the nature of the in-plane and overall pairing changes from particle-like to hole-like in the BCS and unitary regimes, associated with an abnormal increase in the Fermi volume with the pairing strength. In the imbalanced case, the stable polarized superfluid phase shrinks to only a small portion of the entire phase space spanned by $t$, $d$, imbalance $p$ and interaction strength $U$, mainly in the bosonic regime of low $p$, moderately strong pairing, and relatively large $t$ and small $d$. Due to the Pauli exclusion between paired and excessive fermions within the confined momentum space, a PDW phase emerges and the overall pairing evolves from particle-like into hole-like, as the pairing strength grows stronger in the BEC regime. In both cases, the ground state property is largely governed by the Fermi surface topology. These findings are very different from the cases of pure 3D continuum, 3D lattice or 1DOL.

Chemical potential influence on the condensation energy from a Boson–Fermion model of superconductivity

Influence of the temperature dependent chemical potential on the condensation energy from a ternary Boson–Fermion model of superconductivity is reported, it consist of unbound electrons/holes which are fermions plus two-electron and two-hole Cooper pairs which are bosons. When solving simultaneously the set of equations of the mixture (two gap-like equations, one for electron pairs and another one for hole pairs, plus the particle number conservation equation) within the weak-coupling (BCS regime), the resulting superconducting chemical potential shows a shift from its normal state counterpart, which is related to both the magnitude of the temperature-dependent superconducting gap and to the Fermi energy of the superconductor. As predicted by van der Marel in the early 1990s we also find that the superconducting chemical potential has a prominent kink at critical temperature Tc, which in turn coincides with the normal state chemical potential. Also there is a discontinuity in its first derivative which directly affects the magnitude in the specific heat jump. We show that the difference between the superconducting and normal state chemical potentials is of the same order of magnitude as the corresponding difference between the thermodynamic potentials for the mixture, and must therefore be accounted for in the condensation energy calculations instead of ignoring it as is done often. The condensation energy obtained here shows very good agreement with experimental data for elemental superconductors.

Persistent Currents in Rings of Ultracold Fermionic Atoms.

We have produced persistent currents of ultracold fermionic atoms trapped in a ring, with lifetimes greater than 10sec in the strongly interacting regime. These currents remain stable well into the BCS regime at sufficiently low temperature. We drive a circulating BCS superfluid into the normal phase and back by changing the interaction strength and find that the probability for quantized superflow to reappear is remarkably insensitive to the time spent in the normal phase and the minimum interaction strength. After ruling out spontaneous current formation for our experimental conditions, we argue that the reappearance of superflow is due to weak damping of normal currents in this limit. These results establish that ultracold fermionic atoms with tunable interactions can be used to create matter-wave circuits similar to those previously created with weakly interacting bosonic atoms.

Pairing Phenomena and Superfluidity of Atomic Fermi Gases in a Two‐Dimensional Optical Lattice: Unusual Effects of Lattice‐Continuum Mixing

AbstractThe superfluid behavior of ultracold atomic Fermi gases with a short range attractive interaction in a two‐dimensional optical lattice (2DOL) is studied using a pairing fluctuation theory, within the context of BCS‐BEC crossover. It is found that the mixing of lattice and continuum dimensions leads to exotic phenomena. For relatively large lattice constant d and small hopping integral t, the superfluid transition temperature exhibits a remarkable reentrant behavior as a function of the interaction strength, and leads to a pair density wave ground state, where vanishes, for a range of intermediate coupling strength. In the unitary and BCS regimes, the nature of the in‐plane and overall pairing changes from particle‐like to hole‐like, with an unexpected nonmonotonic dependence of the chemical potential on the pairing strength. The Bose–Einstein condensation asymptotic behaviors exhibit distinct power law dependencies on the interaction strength compared to cases of pure 3D lattice, 3D continuum, and 1DOL. These predictions can be tested in future experiments.

Observation of the density dependence of the closed-channel fraction of a 6Li superfluid.

Atomic Fermi gases provide an ideal platform for studying pairing and superfluid physics, using a Feshbach resonance between closed-channel molecular states and open-channel scattering states. Of particular interest is the strongly interacting regime. We show that the closed-channel fraction [Formula: see text] provides an effective probe for important many-body interacting effects, especially through its density dependence, which is absent from two-body theoretical predictions. Here we measure [Formula: see text] as a function of interaction strength and the Fermi temperature [Formula: see text] in a trapped 6Li superfluid throughout the entire Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer-Bose-Einstein-condensate crossover, in quantitative agreement with theory when important thermal contributions outside the superfluid core are taken into account. Away from the deep-BEC regime, the fraction [Formula: see text] is sensitive to [Formula: see text]. In particular, our data show [Formula: see text] with [Formula: see text] at unitarity, in quantitative agreement with calculations of a two-channel pairing fluctuation theory, and [Formula: see text] increases rapidly into the BCS regime, reflecting many-body interaction effects as predicted.

Third-harmonic generation in excitonic insulators

We study third-harmonic generation (THG) in an excitonic insulator (EI) described in a two-band correlated electron model. Employing the perturbative expansion with respect to the external electric field, we derive the THG susceptibility taking into account the collective dynamics of the excitonic order parameter. In the inversion-symmetric EI, the collective order parameter motion is activated at second order of the external field and its effects arise in THG. We find three peaks in the THG susceptibility at energies $\hbar \Omega = \Delta_g/3$, $\Delta_g/2$, and $\Delta_g$, where $\Delta_g$ is the band gap. While the THG response at $\Delta_g/3$ is caused by bare three-photon excitation of the independent particle across the band gap, the latter two peaks involve the motion of the order parameter activated at second order. The resulting resonant peaks are prominent in particular in the BCS regime but they become less significant in the BEC regime. We demonstrate that the resonant peak originated by the collective excitation is observable in the temperature profile of the THG intensity. Our study suggests that the THG measurement should be promising for detecting the excitonic collective nature of materials.

Resonant multi-gap superconductivity at room temperature near a Lifshitz topological transition in sulfur hydrides

The maximum critical temperature for superconductivity in pressurized hydrides appears at the top of superconducting domes in Tc vs pressure curves at a particular pressure, which is not predicted by standard superconductivity theories. The high-order anisotropic Van Hove singularity near the Fermi level observed in band-structure calculations of pressurized sulfur hydride, typical of a supermetal, has been associated with the array of metallic hydrogen wire modules forming a nanoscale heterostructure at an atomic limit called the superstripe phase. Here, we propose that pressurized sulfur hydrides behave as a heterostructure made of a nanoscale superlattice of interacting quantum wires with a multicomponent electronic structure. We present first-principles quantum calculation of a universal superconducting dome where Tc amplification in multi-gap superconductivity is driven by the Fano–Feshbach resonance due to a configuration interaction between open and closed pairing channels, i.e., between multiple gaps in the BCS regime, resonating with a single gap in the BCS–Bose–Einstein condensation crossover regime. In the proposed three dimensional phase diagram, the critical temperature shows a superconducting dome where Tc is a function of two variables: (i) the Lifshitz parameter (η) measuring the separation of the chemical potential from the Lifshitz transition normalized by the inter-wire coupling and (ii) the effective electron–phonon coupling (g) in the appearing new Fermi surface including phonon softening. The results will be of help for material design of room-temperature superconductors at ambient pressure.

Analytic-normal-mode frequencies for N identical particles: The microscopic dynamics underlying the emergence and stability of excitation gaps from BCS to unitarity

The frequencies of the analytic normal modes for N identical particles are studied as a function of system parameters from the weakly interacting BCS regime to the strongly interacting unitary regime. The normal modes were obtained previously from a first-order L=0 group theoretic solution of a three-dimensional Hamiltonian with a general two-body interaction for confined, identical particles. In a precursor to this study, the collective behavior of these normal modes was investigated as a function of N from few-body systems to many-body systems analyzing the contribution of individual particles to the collective macroscopic motions. A specific case, the Hamiltonian for Fermi gases in the unitary regime was studied in more detail. This regime is known to support collective behavior in the form of superfluidity and has previously been successfully described using normal modes. Two phenomena that could sustain the emergence and stability of superfluid behavior were revealed, including the behavior of the normal mode frequencies as N increases. In this paper, I focus on a more detailed analysis of these analytic frequencies, extending my investigation to include Hamiltonians with a range of interparticle interaction strengths from the BCS regime to the unitary regime and analyzing the microscopic dynamics that lead to large gaps at unitarity. The results of the current study suggest that in regimes where higher-order effects are small, normal modes an be used to describe the physics of superfluidity from the weakly interacting BCS regime with the emergence of small excitation gaps to unitarity with its large gaps, and can offer insight into a possible microscopic understanding of the behavior at unitarity. This approach could thus offer an alternative to the two-body pairing models commonly used to describe superfluidity along this transition.

Low-momentum interactions for ultracold Fermi gases

We consider a two-component Fermi gas with a contact interaction from the BCS regime to the unitary limit. Starting from the idea that many-body effects should not depend on short-distance or high-momentum physics which is encoded in the s-wave scattering length, but only on momentum scales of the order of the Fermi momentum, we build effective low-momentum interactions that reproduce the scattering phase shifts of the contact interaction below some momentum cutoff. Inspired from recent successes of this method in nuclear structure theory, we use these interactions to describe the equation of state of the Fermi gas in the framework of Hartree-Fock-Bogliubov theory with perturbative corrections. In the BCS regime, there is a range of cutoffs where we obtain fully converged results. Near unitarity, convergence is not yet reached, but we obtain promising results for the ground-state energies close to the experimental ones. Limitations and possible extensions of the approach are discussed.

Propagation of first and second sound in a two-dimensional Fermi superfluid

Sound propagation is a macroscopic manifestation of the interplay between the equilibrium thermodynamics and the dynamical transport properties of fluids. Here, for a two-dimensional system of ultracold fermions, we calculate the first and second sound velocities across the whole BCS-BEC crossover and we analyze the system response to an external perturbation. In the low-temperature regime we reproduce the recent measurements [Phys Rev. Lett. {\bf 124}, 240403 (2020)] of the first sound velocity, which, due to the decoupling of density and entropy fluctuations, is the sole mode excited by a density probe. Conversely, a heat perturbation excites only the second sound, which, being sensitive to the superfluid depletion, vanishes in the deep BCS regime, and jumps discontinuously to zero at the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless superfluid transition. A mixing between the modes occurs only in the finite-temperature BEC regime, where our theory converges to the purely bosonic results.

A generalized molecule approach capturing the Feshbach-induced pairing physics in the BEC–BCS crossover

By including the effect of a trap with characteristic energy given by the Fermi temperature T F in a two-body two-channel model for Feshbach resonances, we reproduce the measured binding energy of ultracold molecules in a 40K atomic Fermi gas. We also reproduce the experimental closed-channel fraction Z across the BEC–BCS crossover and into the BCS regime of a 6Li atomic Fermi gas. We obtain the expected behavior at unitarity, together with the recently measured proportionality constant. Our results are also in agreement with recent measurements of the Z dependency on T F on the BCS side, where a significant quantitative discrepancy between experimental data and theory’s predictions has been repeatedly reported. In order to contrast with future experiments we report the proportionality constant at unitarity between Z and predicted by our model for a 40K atomic Fermi gas.

From weak to strong: Constrained extrapolation of perturbation series with applications to dilute Fermi systems

We develop a method that uses truncation-order-dependent re-expansions constrained by generic strong-coupling information to extrapolate perturbation series to the nonperturbative regime. The method is first benchmarked against a zero-dimensional model field theory and then applied to the dilute Fermi gas in one and three dimensions. Overall, our method significantly outperforms Pad\'e and Borel extrapolations in these examples. The results for the ground-state energy of the three-dimensional Fermi gas are robust with respect to changes of the form of the re-expansion and compare well with quantum Monte Carlo simulations throughout the BCS regime and beyond.

Role of Nambu-Goldstone modes in the fermionic-superfluid point contact

In fermionic superfluids that are charge neutral, Nambu-Goldstone (NG) modes also known as Anderson-Bogoliubov modes emerge as a result of spontaneous symmetry breaking. Here, we discuss DC transport properties of such NG modes through a quantum point contact. We show that contrary to a naive view that enhancement of the phase stiffness may suppress transport of the NG modes, there must be an anomalous contribution that survives at low temperature. This contribution originates from the conversion process between the condensate and NG mode. We find that within the BCS regime the anomalous contribution is enhanced with increasing channel transmittance and attractive interaction, and leads to a temperature-dependent Lorenz number and absence of the bunching effect in current noise.

Strong pairing in two dimensions: pseudogaps, domes, and other implications

This paper addresses the transition from the normal to the superfluid state in strongly correlated two dimensional fermionic superconductors and Fermi gases. We arrive at the Berezinskii–Kosterlitz–Thouless (BKT) temperature TBKT as a function of attractive pairing strength by associating it with the onset of ‘quasi-condensation’ in the normal phase. Our approach builds on a criterion for determining the BKT transition temperature for atomic gases which is based on a well established quantum Monte Carlo analysis of the phase space density. This latter quantity, when derived from BCS–BEC crossover theory for fermions, leads to non-monotonic behavior for TBKT as a function of the attractive interaction or inverse scattering length. In Fermi gases, this implies a robust superconducting dome followed by a long tail from the flat BEC asymptote, rather similar to what is observed experimentally. For lattice systems we find that TBKT has an absolute maximum of the order of 0.1EF. We discuss how our results compare with those derived from the Nelson–Kosterlitz criterion based on the mean field superfluid density and the approach to the transition from below. While there is agreement in the strict mean-field BCS regime at weak coupling, we find that at moderate pairing strength bosonic excitations cause a substantial increase in TBKT followed by an often dramatic decrease before the system enters the BEC regime.

Dipole oscillations of fermionic quantum gases along the BEC-BCS crossover in disordered potentials

We investigate dipole oscillations of ultracold Fermi gases along the BEC-BCS crossover through disordered potentials. We observe a disorder-induced damping of oscillations as well as a change of the fundamental Kohn-mode frequency. The measurement results are compared to numerical density matrix renormalization group calculations as well as to a three-dimensional simulation of non-interacting fermions. Experimentally, we find a disorder-dependent damping, which grows approximately with the second power of the disorder strength. Moreover, we observe experimentally a change of oscillation frequency which deviates from the expected behavior of a damped harmonic oscillator on a percent level. While this behavior is qualitatively expected from the theoretical models used, quantitatively the experimental observations show a significantly stronger effect than predicted by theory. Furthermore, while the frequency shift seems to scale differently with interaction strength in the BEC versus BCS regime, the damping coefficient apparently decreases with the strength of interaction, but not with the sign, which changes for BEC and BCS type Fermi gases. This is surprising, as the dominant damping mechanisms are expected to be different in the two regimes.

Superfluidity and pairing phenomena in ultracold atomic Fermi gases in one-dimensional optical lattices. I. Balanced case

The superfluidity and pairing phenomena in ultracold atomic Fermi gases have been of great interest in recent years, with multiple tunable parameters. Here we study the BCS-BEC crossover behavior of balanced two-component Fermi gases in a one-dimensional optical lattice, which is distinct from the simple three-dimensional (3D) continuum and a fully 3D lattice often found in a condensed matter system. We use a pairing fluctuation theory which includes self-consistent feedback effects at finite temperatures, and find widespread pseudogap phenomena beyond the BCS regime. As a consequence of the lattice periodicity, the superfluid transition temperature $T_c$ decreases with pairing strength in the BEC regime, where it approaches asymptotically $T_c = \pi an/2m$, with $a$ being the $s$-wave scattering length, and $n$ ($m$) the fermion density (mass). In addition, the quasi-two dimensionality leads to fast growing (absolute value of the) fermionic chemical potential $\mu$ and pairing gap $\Delta$, which depends exponentially on the ratio $d/a$. Importantly, $T_c$ at unitarity increases with the lattice constant $d$ and hopping integral $t$. The effect of the van Hove singularity on $T_c$ is identified. The superfluid density exhibits $T^{3/2}$ power laws at low $T$, away from the extreme BCS limit. These predictions can be tested in future experiments.