2003/12/05 by Michiel Wouters, M. Wouters, J. Tempere +1 · 6 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #Nonlinear Photonic Systems #Strong Light-Matter Interactions #cond-mat
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physreva.70.013616
published as Phys. Rev. A 70, 013616 (2004). · 13 pages + 2 figures
arxiv created 2003/12/05 · openalex publication_date 2004/07/30 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
To describe the tunneling dynamics of a stack of two-dimensional fermionic superfluids in an optical potential, we derive an effective action functional from a path integral treatment. This effective action leads in the saddle point approximation to equations of motion for the density and the phase of the superfluid Fermi gas in each layer. In the strong coupling limit (where bosonic molecules are formed) these equations reduce to a discrete nonlinear Schr"odinger equation, where the molecular tunneling amplitude is reduced for large binding energies. In the weak coupling (BCS) regime, we study the evolution of the stacked superfluids and derive an approximate analytical expression for the oscillation frequency of the center of mass in an external harmonic potential. In both the weak and intermediate coupling regimes, the detection of the Josephson oscillations described by our path integral formalism constitutes experimental evidence for the fermionic superfluid regime.