Non-equilibrium Enhancement of Cooper Pairing in Cold Fermion Systems

TL;DR

This paper explores how non-equilibrium conditions, induced by optical excitation and cooling, can significantly enhance Cooper pairing and superfluidity in cold fermion systems, potentially raising the pairing transition temperature.

Contribution

It introduces a theoretical framework for non-equilibrium enhancement of superfluidity in cold Fermi gases, inspired by Eliashberg's work on microwave-enhanced superconductivity.

Findings

Non-equilibrium states can shift quasiparticle spectra to higher energies.

Effective pairing temperature can be substantially increased under non-equilibrium conditions.

The enhancement effect is significant even beyond small perturbations.

Abstract

Non-equilibrium stimulation of superfluidity in trapped Fermi gases is discussed by analogy to the work of Eliashberg [G. M. Eliashberg, in "Nonequilibrium Superconductivity," edited by D. N. Langenberg and A. I. Larkin (North-Holland, New York, 1986)] on the microwave enhancement of superconductivity. Optical excitation of the fermions balanced by heat loss due to thermal contact with a boson bath and/or evaporative cooling enables stationary non-equilibrium states to exist. Such a state manifests as a shift of the quasiparticle spectrum to higher energies and this effect effectively raises the pairing transition temperature. As an illustration, we calculate the effective enhancement of Cooper pairing and superfluidity in both the normal and superfluid phases for a mixture of Rb and Li in the limit of small departure from equilibrium. It is argued that in experiment the desirable effect is not limited to such small perturbations and the effective enhancement of the pairing temperature may be quite large.