Transport of Spin and Mass at Normal-Superfluid Interfaces in the Unitary Fermi Gas

TL;DR

This paper models and analyzes spin and mass transport across normal-superfluid interfaces in a unitary Fermi gas, revealing thresholds and the role of Andreev reflection, aiding future experimental characterization.

Contribution

It introduces a phenomenological mean-field model to study non-equilibrium spin and mass transport at NS interfaces in a unitary Fermi gas, highlighting transport thresholds and Andreev reflection effects.

Findings

Spin current is suppressed below a threshold in unpolarized superfluids.

Threshold in mass current occurs when Andreev reflection vanishes.

Andreev reflection generally prevents a mass current threshold.

Abstract

Transport in strongly interacting Fermi gases provides a window into the non-equilibrium behavior of strongly correlated fermions. In particular, the interface between a strongly polarized normal gas and a weakly polarized superfluid at finite temperature presents a model for understanding transport at normal-superfluid and normal-superconductor interfaces. An excess of polarization in the normal phase or a deficit of polarization in the superfluid brings the system out of equilibrium, leading to transport currents across the interface. We implement a phenomenological mean-field model of the unitary Fermi gas, and investigate the transport of spin and mass under non-equilibrium conditions. We consider independently prepared normal and superfluid regions brought into contact, and calculate the instantaneous spin and mass currents across the normal-superfluid (NS) interface. For an unpolarized superfluid, we find that spin current is suppressed below a threshold value in the driving chemical potential differences, while the threshold nearly vanishes for a critically polarized superfluid. The mass current can exhibit a threshold in cases where Andreev reflection vanishes, while in general Andreev reflection prevents the occurrence of a threshold in the mass current. Our results provide guidance to future experiments aiming to characterize spin and mass transport across NS interfaces.