Superfluid Properties Research Articles

Supersolid symmetry breaking from compressional oscillations in a dipolar quantum gas.

Supersolids are exotic materials combining the frictionless flow of a superfluid with the crystal-like periodic density modulation of a solid. The supersolid phase of matter was predicted 50 years ago1-3 for solid helium4-8. Ultracold quantum gases have recently been made to exhibit periodic order typical of a crystal, owing to various types of controllable interaction9-13. A crucial feature of a D-dimensional supersolid is the occurrence of D+1 gapless excitations, reflecting the Goldstone modes associated with the spontaneous breaking of two continuous symmetries: the breaking of phase invariance, corresponding to the locking of the phase of the atomic wave functions at the origin of superfluid phenomena, and the breaking of translational invariance due to the lattice structure of the system. Such modes have been the object of intense theoretical investigations1,14-18, but they have not yet been observed experimentally. Here we demonstrate supersolid symmetry breaking through the appearance of two distinct compressional oscillation modes in a harmonically trapped dipolar Bose-Einstein condensate, reflecting the gapless Goldstone excitations of the homogeneous system. We observe that the higher-frequency mode is associated with an oscillation of the periodicity of the emergent lattice and the lower-frequency mode characterizes the superfluid oscillations. This work also suggests the presence of two separate quantum phase transitions between the superfluid, supersolid and solid-like configurations.

Superfluidity in nuclear systems and neutron stars

Nuclear matter and finite nuclei exhibit the property of superfluidity by forming Cooper pairs. We review the microscopic theories and methods that are being employed to understand the basic properties of superfluid nuclear systems, with emphasis on the spatially extended matter encountered in neutron stars, supernova envelopes, and nuclear collisions. Our survey of quantum many-body methods includes techniques that employ Green functions, correlated basis functions, and Monte Carlo sampling of quantum states. With respect to empirical realizations of nucleonic and hadronic superfluids, this review is focused on progress that has been made toward quantitative understanding of their properties at the level of microscopic theories of pairing, with emphasis on the condensates that exist under conditions prevailing in neutron-star interiors. These include singlet $S$-wave pairing of neutrons in the inner crust, and, in the quantum fluid interior, singlet-$S$ proton pairing and triplet coupled $P$-$F$-wave neutron pairing. Additionally, calculations of weak-interaction rates in neutron-star superfluids within the Green function formalism are examined in detail. We close with a discussion of quantum vortex states in nuclear systems and their dynamics in neutron-star superfluid interiors.

Two-fluid dynamics of one-dimensional quantum liquids in the absence of Galilean invariance

Luttinger liquid theory of one-dimensional quantum systems ignores exponentially weak backscattering of particles. This endows Luttinger liquids with superfluid properties. The corresponding two-fluid hydrodynamic description available at present applies only to Galilean-invariant systems, whereas most experimental realizations of one-dimensional quantum liquids lack Galilean invariance. Here we develop the two-fluid theory of such quantum liquids. In the low-frequency limit the theory reduces to single-fluid hydrodynamics. However, the absence of Galilean invariance brings about three new transport coefficients. We obtain expressions for these coefficients in terms of the backscattering rate.

Coupled superfluidity of binary Bose mixtures in two dimensions

We consider a two-component Bose gas in two dimensions at low temperature with short-range repulsive interaction. In the coexistence phase where both components are superfluid, inter-species interactions induce a nondissipative drag between the two superfluid flows (Andreev-Bashkin effect). We show that this behavior leads to a modification of the usual Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) transition in two dimensions. We extend the renormalization of the superfluid densities at finite temperature using the renormalization group approach and find that the vortices of one component have a large influence on the superfluid properties of the other, mediated by the nondissipative drag. The extended BKT flow equations indicate that the occurrence of the vortex unbinding transition in one of the components can induce the breakdown of superfluidity also in the other, leading to a locking phenomenon for the critical temperatures of the two gases.

Quantum hydrodynamics for supersolid crystals and quasicrystals

Supersolids are theoretically predicted quantum states that break the continuous rotational and translational symmetries of liquids while preserving superfluid transport properties. Over the last decade, much progress has been made in understanding and characterizing supersolid phases through numerical simulations for specific interaction potentials. The formulation of an analytically tractable framework for generic interactions still poses theoretical challenges. By going beyond the usually considered quadratic truncations, we derive a systematic higher-order generalization of the Gross-Pitaevskii mean field model in conceptual similarity with the Swift-Hohenberg theory of pattern formation. We demonstrate the tractability of this broadly applicable approach by determining the ground state phase diagram and the dispersion relations for the supersolid lattice vibrations in terms of the potential parameters. Our analytical predictions agree well with numerical results from direct hydrodynamic simulations and earlier quantum Monte-Carlo studies. The underlying framework is universal and can be extended to anisotropic pair potentials with complex Fourier-space structure.

Anisotropic Superfluidity in a Weakly Interacting Condensate of Quasi‐2D Photons

AbstractThe anisotropic superfluidity in a weakly interacting two‐dimensional Bose gas of photons in a dye‐filled optical microcavity is investigated, taking into account the dependence of the photon effective mass on the in‐plane coordinate. With the use of the generalized Gross–Pitaevskii equation and the Bogoliubov approach, it is shown that the modulation of the microcavity width leads to an effective periodic potential and the periodicity of the condensate wave function, and both the condensate energy and the spectrum of elementary excitations depend on the direction of motion. The anisotropic character of the dynamical and superfluid properties, such as helicity modulus, superfluid density, and sound velocity, as well as experimentally observable manifestations of their anisotropy are described.

Rotating Atomic Quantum Gases with Light-Induced Azimuthal Gauge Potentials and the Observation of the Hess-Fairbank Effect.

We demonstrate synthetic azimuthal gauge potentials for Bose-Einstein condensates from engineering atom-light couplings. The gauge potential is created by adiabatically loading the condensate into the lowest energy Raman-dressed state, achieving a coreless vortex state. The azimuthal gauge potentials act as effective rotations and are tunable by the Raman coupling and detuning. We characterize the spin textures of the dressed states, in agreements with the theory. The lowest energy dressed state is stable with a 4.5-s half-atom-number-fraction lifetime. In addition, we exploit the azimuthal gauge potential to demonstrate the Hess-Fairbank effect, the analogue of Meissner effect in superconductors. The atoms in the absolute ground state has a zero quasiangular momentum and transits into a polar-core vortex when the synthetic magnetic flux is tuned to exceed a critical value. Our demonstration serves as a paradigm to create topological excitations by tailoring atom-light interactions where both types of SO(3) vortices in the |⟨F[over →]⟩|=1 manifold, coreless vortices and polar-core vortices, are created in our experiment. The gauge field in the stationary Hamiltonian opens a path to investigating rotation properties of atomic superfluids under thermal equilibrium.

The study on temperature dependent superfluid density of anisotropic superconductors

The most of superconductors are highly anisotropic superconductors, then the measurement on the superfluid density properties of superconductors are complicated and depended on directions. In this study, the superfluid density of anisotropic superconductors was studied by semiclassical approach. We are interested in the spin-singlet superconducting state with the anisotropic spherical Fermi surface, and the anisotropic gap function with the spherical ellipse shape in weak-coupling limit. After some calculation, we can derive the temperature dependent formula of the superfluid density near zero temperature for the ab- and c- spatial components. The numerical calculation fit to the experimental data of CaAlSi superconductor was shown. We found that our model can fit well, then the CaAlSi superconductor shows the anisotropic superfluid density.

Superfluid-superradiant mixed phase of the interacting degenerate Fermi gas in an optical cavity

We investigate the ground-state properties of an attractively interactingdegenerate Fermi gas coupling with a high-finesse optical cavity. We predicta new mixed phase with both the superfluid and superradiant properties forthe intermediate fermion-fermion interaction and fermion-photon couplingstrengths. Moreover, in this mixed phase a relatively large ratio of thescaled polarization to the dimensionless mean-field gap, which is in contrastto that in the conventional superfluid regime can be obtained. We alsofigure out rich phase diagrams depending crucially on the atomic resonantfrequency (effective Zeeman field) and address briefly the experimentaldetection of our predicted quantum phases.

Exchange Interaction of Quantum Entities as Interaction of Spin Vortices Created by the Quantum Entities in the Physical Vacuum

The aim of this paper is to show that there is a physical process that underlies the exchange interaction of quantum entities. To this end the features of exchange interaction of quantum entities in the following physical phenomena are discussed: the creation of Cooper pairs in superconductors and superfluids, the covalent (molecular) bond, the interaction of light beams. The explanation of the exchange interaction is based on the concept of quantum mechanics according to which the quantum entity that is a singularity in electric and/or magnetic fields produces in the physical vacuum a pair of oppositely charged virtual particles having precessing spin, that is being essentially a spin vortex in the physical vacuum. The analysis of the above mentioned phenomena allows one to suppose that the exchange interaction of quantum entities in these phenomena may be due to interaction of spin vortices created by these quantum entities in the physical vacuum. It is shown also that the interaction of these vortices may be an electric dipole-dipole interaction. The equations describing the electric dipole-dipole interaction of spin vortices are derived in this work. A possibility of influence of the dipole-dipole interaction of spin vortices created by quantum entities that constitute the medium on viscosity of the medium, that is, on its superconductive and superfluid properties is considered.

Evidence from Quantum MonteCarlo Simulations of Large-Gap Superfluidity and BCS-BEC Crossover in Double Electron-Hole Layers.

We report quantum MonteCarlo evidence of the existence of large gap superfluidity in electron-hole double layers over wide density ranges. The superfluid parameters evolve from normal state to BEC with decreasing density, with the BCS state restricted to a tiny range of densities due to the strong screening of Coulomb interactions, which causes the gap to rapidly become large near the onset of superfluidity. The superfluid properties exhibit similarities to ultracold fermions and iron-based superconductors, suggesting an underlying universal behavior of BCS-BEC crossovers in pairing systems.

Effective Control of Chemical Potentials by Rabi Coupling with RF-Fields in Ultracold Mixtures

We show that a linear term coupling the atoms of an ultracold binary mixture provides a simple method to induce an effective and tunable population imbalance between them. This term is easily realized by Rabi coupling between different hyperfine levels of the same atomic species. The resulting effective imbalance holds for one-particle states dressed by the Rabi coupling and obtained by diagonalizing the mixing matrix of the Rabi term. This way of controlling the chemical potentials applies to both bosonic and fermionic atoms and it also allows for spatially- and temporally-dependent imbalances. As a first application, we show that, in the case of two attractive fermionic hyperfine levels with equal chemical potentials coupled by the Rabi pulse, the same superfluid properties of an imbalanced binary mixture are recovered. We finally discuss the properties of m-species mixtures in the presence of SU(m)-invariant interactions.

Color superfluidity of neutral ultracold fermions in the presence of color-flip and color-orbit fields

We describe how color superfluidity is modified in the presence of color-flip and color-orbit fields in the context of ultra-cold atoms, and discuss connections between this problem and that of color superconductivity in quantum chromodynamics. We consider s-wave contact interactions between different colors, and we identify superfluid phases, with five being nodal and one being fully gapped. When our system is described in a mixed color basis, the superfluid order parameter tensor is characterized by six independent components with explicit momentum dependence induced by color-orbit coupling. The nodal superfluid phases are topological in nature, and the low temperature phase diagram of color-flip field versus interaction parameter exhibits a pentacritical point, where all five nodal color superfluid phases converge. These results are in sharp contrast to the case of zero color-flip and color-orbit fields, where the system has perfect U(3) symmetry and possess a superfluid phase that is characterized by fully gapped quasiparticle excitations with a single complex order parameter with no momentum dependence and by inert unpaired fermions representing a non-superfluid component. Furthermore, we analyse the order parameter tensor in a total pseudo-spin basis, investigate its momentum dependence in the singlet, triplet and quintet sectors, and compare the results with the simpler case of spin-1/2 fermions in the presence of spin-flip and spin-orbit fields. Finally, we analyse in detail spectroscopic properties of color superfluids in the presence of color-flip and color-orbit fields, such as the quasiparticle excitation spectrum, momentum distribution, and density of states to help characterize all the encountered topological quantum phases, which can be realized in fermionic isotopes of Lithium, Potassium and Ytterbium atoms with three internal states trapped.

Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless transition in the time-reversal-symmetric Hofstadter-Hubbard model

Assuming that two-component Fermi gases with opposite artificial magnetic fields on a square optical lattice are well-described by the so-called time-reversal-symmetric Hofstadter-Hubbard model, we explore the thermal superfluid properties along with the critical Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) transition temperature in this model over a wide-range of its parameters. In particular, since our self-consistent BCS-BKT approach takes the multi-band butterfly spectrum explicitly into account, it unveils how dramatically the inter-band contribution to the phase stiffness dominates the intra-band one with an increasing interaction strength for any given magnetic flux.

4He adsorption on a single C40 molecule: Path integral Monte Carlo study

Path-integral Monte Carlo calculations are performed to study the adsorption of 4He atoms on two different isomers of C40: one with the D2 symmetry and the other with the D5d symmetry. Here, we employ the 4He-C40 interaction described by the sum of 4He-C interatomic pair potentials, which allows us to examine the 4He corrugations on the fullerene molecular surfaces. We first observe the layer-by-layer growth of 4He on both C40 isomers, where the first layers are located at a distance of ~ 5.7 A from the molecular centers. From the investigation of the angular 4He density profiles, we find that the 4He layers display different quantum states depending on the number of 4He adatoms N. Between N = 22 and N = 40, the first 4He layer on the D2 isomer shows several different commensurate structures whereas the corresponding 4He layer on D5d undergoes a commensurate-to-incommensurate solid transition like the first 4He layer on graphite. As N increases, the superfluid responses of the first 4He layers on both isomers exhibit reentrant behavior with superfluidity being completely quenched at structurally-ordered states. In addition, the superfluid fraction of the first 4He layer is found to be about three times as large on D2 as on D5d for the same number of 4He atoms. The different structural and superfluid properties of 4He adatoms depending on the isomeric type could provide an experimental way of selecting a specific C40 isomer.

Multicomponent Electron-Hole Superfluidity and the BCS-BEC Crossover in Double Bilayer Graphene.

Superfluidity in coupled electron-hole sheets of bilayer graphene is predicted here to be multicomponent because of the conduction and valence bands. We investigate the superfluid crossover properties as functions of the tunable carrier densities and the tunable energy band gap E_{g}. For small band gaps there is a significant boost in the two superfluid gaps, but the interaction-driven excitations from the valence to the conduction band can weaken the superfluidity, even blocking the system from entering the Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) regime at low densities. At a given larger density, a band gap E_{g}∼80-120 meV can carry the system into the strong-pairing multiband BCS-BEC crossover regime, the optimal range for realization of high-T_{c} superfluidity.

Dipolar Bose Supersolid Stripes.

We study the superfluid properties of a system of fully polarized dipolar bosons moving in the XY plane. We focus on the general case where the polarization field forms an arbitrary angle α with respect to the Z axis, while the system is still stable. We use the diffusion MonteCarlo and the path integral ground state methods to evaluate the one-body density matrix and the superfluid fractions in the region of the phase diagram where the system forms stripes. Despite its oscillatory behavior, the presence of a finite large-distance asymptotic value in the s-wave component of the one-body density matrix indicates the existence of a Bose condensate. The superfluid fraction along the stripes direction is always close to 1, while in the Y direction decreases to a small value that is nevertheless different from zero. These two facts confirm that the stripe phase of the dipolar Bose system is a clear candidate for an intrinsic supersolid without the presence of defects as described by the Andreev-Lifshitz mechanism.

2D Dilute Bose Mixture at Low Temperatures

The thermodynamic and superfluid properties of the dilute two-dimensional binary Bose mixture at low temperatures are discussed. We also considered the problem of the emergence of the long-range order in these systems. All calculations are performed by means of celebrated Popov's path-integral approach for the Bose gas with a short-range interparticle potential.

Exploiting Coherence in Nonlinear Spin-Superfluid Transport

We show how the interference between superfluid spin currents can endow spin circuits with coherent logic functionality. While the hydrodynamic aspects of the linear-response collective spin transport obviate interference features, we focus on the nonlinear regime, where the critical supercurrent is sensitive to the phase accumulated by the condensate in a loop geometry. We propose to control this phase by electrical gating that tunes the spin-condensate coherence length. The nonlinear aspects of the spin superfluidity thus naturally lend themselves to the construction of logic gates, uniquely exploiting the coherence of collective spin currents. Vice versa, this functionality can be used to reveal the fundamental properties of spin superfluids.

Hofstadter-Hubbard model with opposite magnetic fields: Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer pairing and superfluidity in the nearly flat butterfly bands

Despite the multi-band spectrum of the widely-known Hofstadter butterfly, it turns out that the pairing correlations of the time-reversal-symmetric Hofstadter-Hubbard model are well-described by a single order parameter that is uniform in real space. By exploiting a BCS mean-field theory for the nearly-flat butterfly-bands regime of low magnetic-flux limit, here we reveal a number of unusual superfluid properties both in the ground state and at finite temperatures. Our thorough analysis includes but is not limited to the order parameter, condensate and superfluid fractions, and the critical BCS and BKT transition temperatures.