SIMIS | Strongly Interacting Mass Imbalanced Superfluid with ultracold fermions

Summary
Superfluids violate our classical intuition, provoking many intriguing questions in modern condensed matter physics. In particular, superfluid phases with non-standard pairing mechanisms, which play an essential role in diverse physical systems including high-Tc superconductivity, have attracted great interests, and the underlying principles challenge our understanding. Ultracold atomic systems have emerged as an ideal testbed for simulating such many-body states by directly comparing theories with experiments. Recently, the host group has achieved a novel mass-imbalanced Fermi-Fermi mixture, which offers unprecedented opportunities to realize unusual superfluid phases. Here, we propose experimental studies on unconventional superfluidity by exploiting the excellent controllability in our new quantum system.
Mass imbalance changes how the two Fermi surfaces overlap, causing the pairs to have finite momentum and resulting in a rich phase diagram. We aim to explore many-body phases appearing in a mass-imbalanced Fermi-Fermi mixture near the strongly interacting limit. To demonstrate superfluidity, we will probe the atoms by magnetic and optic methods, which allow distinguishing between pairs and unpaired atoms. Moreover, we will investigate the superfluid shell structure in a trapped system to characterize the phase diagram and the thermodynamic properties in the strongly interacting regime, based on tomographic imaging. Finally, we plan to extend our methods to search for exotic forms of superfluidity such as supersolid or gapless phases.
Our research will open a new chapter of condensed-matter simulation with ultracold atoms by providing a unique platform to study unconventional superfluidity. The successful demonstration will have strong impact on the scientific community even beyond the field of quantum gases. The techniques applied in this project can be further developed to address many other interesting topics such as impurity physics and transport dynamics.
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More information & hyperlinks
Web resources: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/894429
Start date: 01-07-2020
End date: 30-06-2022
Total budget - Public funding: 174 167,04 Euro - 174 167,00 Euro
Cordis data

Original description

Superfluids violate our classical intuition, provoking many intriguing questions in modern condensed matter physics. In particular, superfluid phases with non-standard pairing mechanisms, which play an essential role in diverse physical systems including high-Tc superconductivity, have attracted great interests, and the underlying principles challenge our understanding. Ultracold atomic systems have emerged as an ideal testbed for simulating such many-body states by directly comparing theories with experiments. Recently, the host group has achieved a novel mass-imbalanced Fermi-Fermi mixture, which offers unprecedented opportunities to realize unusual superfluid phases. Here, we propose experimental studies on unconventional superfluidity by exploiting the excellent controllability in our new quantum system.
Mass imbalance changes how the two Fermi surfaces overlap, causing the pairs to have finite momentum and resulting in a rich phase diagram. We aim to explore many-body phases appearing in a mass-imbalanced Fermi-Fermi mixture near the strongly interacting limit. To demonstrate superfluidity, we will probe the atoms by magnetic and optic methods, which allow distinguishing between pairs and unpaired atoms. Moreover, we will investigate the superfluid shell structure in a trapped system to characterize the phase diagram and the thermodynamic properties in the strongly interacting regime, based on tomographic imaging. Finally, we plan to extend our methods to search for exotic forms of superfluidity such as supersolid or gapless phases.
Our research will open a new chapter of condensed-matter simulation with ultracold atoms by providing a unique platform to study unconventional superfluidity. The successful demonstration will have strong impact on the scientific community even beyond the field of quantum gases. The techniques applied in this project can be further developed to address many other interesting topics such as impurity physics and transport dynamics.

Status

TERMINATED

Call topic

MSCA-IF-2019

Update Date

28-04-2024
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Horizon 2020
H2020-EU.1. EXCELLENT SCIENCE
H2020-EU.1.3. EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
H2020-EU.1.3.2. Nurturing excellence by means of cross-border and cross-sector mobility
H2020-MSCA-IF-2019
MSCA-IF-2019