Quantum transport in strongly interacting, ultracold fermi gases in box potentials
Name
patel-pbpatel-phd-physics-2022-thesis.pdf
Description
Thesis PDF
Size
34.2 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
a9b8b6ed1e4238964f418e6fbaedb997
Author(s)
Patel, Parth
Advisor(s)
Zwierlein, Martin W.
Date Issued
May 2022
Publisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Abstract
Transport of strongly interacting fermions is crucial for systems as varied as high-𝑇 subscript 𝑐 superconductors, twisted bi-layer graphene, nuclear fission, and neutron stars. In this thesis, I will describe the experiments we performed to measure the transport properties of a strongly-interacting atomic Fermi gas. This system features interactions as strong as allowed by quantum mechanics and features one of the highest pairing strength, with a superfluid transition temperature on the order of the Fermi temperature. Moreover, it is also scale-invariant, making its properties directly relevant for systems with many order of magnitude higher densities. We trap these atoms in a uniform box potential made from repulsive laser light, the key experimental advancement that makes the transport experiment presented here possible. Here, we observe a very low, universal, Heisenberg-uncertainty limited diffusion of both sound and heat by studying the propagation of sound waves and conduction of heat in a uniform gas. Similar to a growing number of high-𝑇 subscript 𝑐 superconductors, we observe anomalous transport properties, like the viscosity and thermal conductivity, that cannot be explained by a Fermi-liquid theory. We show the temperature dependence of all non-zero transport properties, which constitutes a complete characterization of transport phenomena in the spin-balanced, strongly-interacting Fermi gas. Our findings inform theories of fermion transport, with relevance for hydrodynamic flow of electrons, neutrons, and quarks.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics
Terms of Use
In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted
Copyright MIT
Persistent DSpace Link
