Transport measurement of the orbital Kondo effect with ultracold atoms

TL;DR

This paper proposes a method to observe the orbital Kondo effect in ultracold atoms through a transport measurement, revealing universal conductance behavior similar to condensed matter systems.

Contribution

It introduces a novel ultracold atom setup and measurement technique to detect the orbital Kondo effect via transport signatures, extending Kondo physics to atomic systems.

Findings

Transport signature of the orbital Kondo effect is theoretically demonstrated.

Universal logarithmic conductance growth observed near p-wave resonance.

Proposes a feasible experimental protocol for ultracold atom systems.

Abstract

The Kondo effect in condensed-matter systems manifests itself most sharply in their transport measurements. Here we propose an analogous transport signature of the orbital Kondo effect realized with ultracold atoms. Our system consists of imbalanced Fermi seas of two components of fermions and an impurity atom of different species which is confined by an isotropic potential. We first apply a \pi/2 pulse to transform two components of fermions into two superposition states. Their interactions with the impurity atom then cause a "transport" of fermions from majority to minority superposition states, whose numbers can be measured after applying another 3\pi/2 pulse. In particular, when the interaction of one component of fermions with the impurity atom is tuned close to a confinement-induced p-wave or higher partial-wave resonance, the resulting conductance is shown to exhibit the Kondo signature, i.e., universal logarithmic growth by lowering the temperature. The proposed transport measurement will thus provide a clear evidence of the orbital Kondo effect accessible in ultracold atom experiments and pave the way for developing new insights into Kondo physics.