Bad metallic transport in a cold atom Fermi-Hubbard system

Strong interactions in many-body quantum systems complicate the interpretation of charge transport in such materials. To shed light on this problem, we study transport in a clean quantum system: ultracold lithium-6 in a two-dimensional optical lattice, a testing ground for strong interaction physics in the Fermi-Hubbard model. We determine the diffusion constant by measuring the relaxation of an imposed density modulation and modeling its decay hydrodynamically. The diffusion constant is converted to a resistivity by using the Nernst-Einstein relation. That resistivity exhibits a linear temperature dependence and shows no evidence of saturation, two characteristic signatures of a bad metal. The techniques we developed in this study may be applied to measurements of other transport quantities, including the optical conductivity and thermopower.

Source: ScienceNOW - January 24, 2019 Category: Science Authors: Brown, P. T., Mitra, D., Guardado-Sanchez, E., Nourafkan, R., Reymbaut, A., Hebert, C.-D., Bergeron, S., Tremblay, A.- M. S., Kokalj, J., Huse, D. A., Schauss, P., Bakr, W. S. Tags: Physics reports Source Type: news