Nonequilibrium relaxation transport of ultracold atoms

TL;DR

This paper studies how ultracold atomic reservoirs reach equilibrium through a weak connection, analyzing the process's dynamics, time scales, and potential device applications like transistors and capacitors.

Contribution

It introduces a linearized model for nonequilibrium relaxation in ultracold atoms, linking dynamics to equilibrium properties and exploring device functionalities.

Findings

Characterized equilibration time scales using linear response.

Demonstrated potential for ultracold atom transistors and capacitors.

Analyzed efficiency of particle transport devices.

Abstract

We analyze the equilibration process between two either fermionic or bosonic reservoirs containing ultracold atoms with a fixed total number of particles that are weakly connected via a few-level quantum system. We allow for both the temperatures and particle densities of the reservoirs to evolve in time. Subsequently, linearizing the resulting equations enables us to characterize the equilibration process and its time scales in terms of equilibrium reservoir properties and linear-response transport coefficients. Additionally, we investigate the use of such a device as particle transistor or particle capacitor and analyze its efficiency.