Universal entropy transport far from equilibrium across the BCS-BEC crossover

Abstract

The transport properties of strongly interacting fermionic systems can reveal exotic states of matter, but experiments and theory have predominantly focused on bulk systems in the hydrodynamic limit describable with linear response coefficients such as electrical and thermal conductivity. In a ballistic channel connecting two superfluid reservoirs, recent experiments revealed a far-from-equilibrium regime beyond linear hydrodynamics where particle and entropy currents respond nonlinearly to biases of chemical potential and temperature, and their ratio is robust to the channel geometry. However, the origin of this robustness and its relation to the strong interparticle interactions remain unknown. Here, we study the coupled transport of particles and entropy tuning the interaction across the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer to Bose-Einstein condensate (BCS-BEC) crossover, the reservoir degeneracy across the superfluid phase transition, as well as the local potentials and confinement of the channel. Surprisingly, the entropy advectively transported per particle depends only on the interactions and reservoir degeneracy and not on the details of the channel, suggesting that this property has its origin in the universal equilibrium properties of the reservoirs. In contrast, the magnitudes of the advective and diffusive entropy currents vary significantly with the channel details. The advective current increases monotonically towards the BEC side, which can be largely explained by the estimated superfluid gap in the channel. The Wiedemann-Franz law that links the advective and diffusive currents in Fermi liquids is most egregiously violated at unitarity, suggesting a change in the nature of the excitations responsible for entropy diffusion near unitarity. These observations pose fundamental questions regarding transport phenomena in strongly interacting Fermi systems far from equilibrium.