"Observation of shock waves and beyond luttinger liquid physics in cold atoms"


Manas Kulkarni , SUNY Stony Brook
[Host: Austen Lamacraft]
ABSTRACT:
I will present our work with experimentalists at Duke, involving the study of collisions between two strongly interacting atomic Fermi gas clouds. They observed exotic nonlinear hydrodynamic behavior, distinguished by the formation of a very sharp andstable density peak as the clouds collide and subsequent evolution into a box-like shape. We model the nonlinear dynamics of these collisions using quasi-1D hydrodynamic equations. Our simulations of the time-dependent density profiles show near perfect agreement with the data and provide clear evidence of shock wave formation in this universal quantum hydrodynamic system. We argue that these experiments on strongly interacting Fermi gases form an ideal playground for studying out-of-equilibrium nonlinear hydrodynamics. I will then talk about nonlinear collective field theory for a harmonically trapped two-component integrable model with inverse square interactions and spin-exchange. In this context, I will present several results such as spin-charge drag, gradient catastrophe, solitons all of which are hallmarks of physics beyond the luttinger liquid paradigm.
SLIDESHOW:
Atomic Physics Seminar
Monday, January 31, 2011
3:30 PM
Physics Building, Room 204
Note special room.

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