Contact resistance and phase slips in mesoscopic superfluid atom transport

TL;DR

This paper experimentally investigates superfluid atom transport in a mesoscopic system, observing resistive flow, superflow transition, and oscillations, and models these phenomena with electronic circuit analogies.

Contribution

It introduces a novel experimental platform for probing mesoscopic transport in superfluid Bose gases and compares microscopic models to observed conductance.

Findings

Observation of resistive flow and superflow transition

Identification of LC oscillations in superfluid transport

Agreement of experimental data with circuit model

Abstract

We have experimentally measured transport of superfluid, bosonic atoms in a mesoscopic system: a small channel connecting two large reservoirs. Starting far from equilibrium (superfluid in a single reservoir), we observe first resistive flow transitioning at a critical current into superflow, characterized by oscillations. We reproduce this full evolution with a simple electronic circuit model. We compare our fitted conductance to two different microscopic phenomenological models. We also show that the oscillations are consistent with LC oscillations as estimated by the kinetic inductance and effective capacitance in our system. Our experiment provides an attractive platform to begin to probe the mesoscopic transport properties of a dilute, superfluid, Bose gas.