Emergence of a Metallic Quantum Solid Phase in a Rydberg-Dressed Fermi Gas.

We examine possible low-temperature phases of a repulsively Rydberg-dressed Fermi gas in a three-dimensional free space. It is shown that the collective density excitations develop a roton minimum, which is softened at a wave vector smaller than the Fermi wave vector when the particle density is above a critical value. The mean field calculation shows that, unlike the insulating density wave states often observed in conventional condensed matters, a self-assembled metallic density wave state emerges at low temperatures. In particular, the density wave state supports a Fermi surface and a body-centered-cubic crystal order at the same time with the estimated critical temperature being about one tenth of the noninteracting Fermi energy. Our results suggest the emergence of a fermionic quantum solid that should be observable in the current experimental setup.

Particle-wave duality in quantum tunneling of a bright soliton.

One of the most fundamental difference between classical and quantum mechanics is observed in the particle tunneling through a localized potential: the former predicts a discontinuous transmission coefficient (T) as a function in incident velocity between one (complete penetration) and zero (complete reflection); while in the latter T always changes smoothly with a wave nature. Here we report a systematic study of the quantum tunneling property for a bright soliton, which behaves as a classical particle (wave) in the limit of small (large) incident velocity. In the intermediate regime, the classical and quantum properties are combined via a finite (but not full) discontinuity in the tunneling transmission coefficient. We demonstrate that the formation of a localized bound state is essential to describe such inelastic collisions, showing a nontrivial nonlinear effect on the quantum transportation of a bright soliton.

2D gapless topological superfluids generated by pairing phases.

We systematically investigate the ground state phase diagram and the finite temperature phase transitions for a Rydberg-dressed Fermi gas loaded in a bilayer optical lattice. When an effective finite-ranged attraction is induced, our self-consistent mean-field calculation shows that the gapped topological (p-wave) superfluids in each layer are coupled together by thes-wave pairing in an intermediate inter-layer distance with a spontaneously modulated phases between these two order parameters. The obtained ground state is a gapless topological superfluid with quantized topological charges characterizing the gapless points, leading to a zero energy flat band at the edges. Finally, we calculate the finite temperature phase diagrams of this two-dimensional gapless superfluid and observe two distinct critical temperatures, demonstrating the fruitful many-body effects on a paired topological superfluids.

Identification of Neuronal Polarity by Node-Based Machine Learning.

Identifying the direction of signal flows in neural networks is important for understanding the intricate information dynamics of a living brain. Using a dataset of 213 projection neurons distributed in more than 15 neuropils of a Drosophila brain, we develop a powerful machine learning algorithm: node-based polarity identifier of neurons (NPIN). The proposed model is trained only by information specific to nodes, the branch points on the skeleton, and includes both Soma Features (which contain spatial information from a given node to a soma) and Local Features (which contain morphological information of a given node). After including the spatial correlations between nodal polarities, our NPIN provided extremely high accuracy (>96.0%) for the classification of neuronal polarity, even for complex neurons with more than two dendrite/axon clusters. Finally, we further apply NPIN to classify the neuronal polarity of neurons in other species (Blowfly and Moth), which have much less neuronal data available. Our results demonstrate the potential of NPIN as a powerful tool to identify the neuronal polarity of insects and to map out the signal flows in the brain's neural networks if more training data become available in the future.

Superfluidity and dimerization in a multilayered system of fermionic polar molecules.

We consider a layered system of fermionic molecules with permanent dipole moments aligned perpendicular to the layers by an external field. The dipole interactions between fermions in adjacent layers are attractive and induce interlayer pairing. Because of the competition for pairing among adjacent layers, the mean-field ground state of the layered system is a dimerized superfluid, with pairing only between every other layer. We construct an effective Ising-XY lattice model that describes the interplay between dimerization and superfluid phase fluctuations. In addition to the dimerized superfluid ground state, and high-temperature normal state, at intermediate temperature, we find an unusual dimerized "pseudogap" state with only short-range phase coherence. We propose light-scattering experiments to detect dimerization.

Superfluidity enhanced by spin-flip tunnelling in the presence of a magnetic field.

It is well-known that when the magnetic field is stronger than a critical value, the spin imbalance can break the Cooper pairs of electrons and hence hinder the superconductivity in a spin-singlet channel. In a bilayer system of ultra-cold Fermi gases, however, we demonstrate that the critical value of the magnetic field at zero temperature can be significantly increased by including a spin-flip tunnelling, which opens a gap in the spin-triplet channel near the Fermi surface and hence reduces the influence of the effective magnetic field on the superfluidity. The phase transition also changes from first order to second order when the tunnelling exceeds a critical value. Considering a realistic experiment, this mechanism can be implemented by applying an intralayer Raman coupling between the spin states with a phase difference between the two layers.

Quantum phase transitions of polar molecules in bilayer systems.

We investigate the quantum phase transitions of bosonic polar molecules in a two-dimensional double layer system. We show that an interlayer bound state of dipoles (dimers) can be formed when the dipole strength is above a critical value, leading to a zero-energy resonance in the interlayer s-wave scattering channel. In the positive detuning side of the resonance, the strong repulsive interlayer pseudopotential can drive the system into a maximally entangled state, where the wave function is a superposition of two states that have all molecules in one layer and none in the other. We discuss how the zero-energy resonance, dimer states, and the maximally entangled state can be measured in time-of-flight experiments.

Strong-coupling theory for the superfluidity of Bose-Fermi mixtures.

We develop a strong-coupling theory for the superfluidity of fermion pairing phase in a Bose-Fermi mixture. Dynamical screening, self-energy renormalization, and a pairing gap function are included self-consistently within the adiabatic limit (i.e., the phonon velocity is much smaller than the Fermi velocity). An analytical solution for the transition temperature (T(c)) is derived within reasonable approximations. Using typical parameters of a 40K-87Rb mixture, we find that the calculated T(c) is several times larger than that obtained in the weak coupling theory, and can be up to several percent of the Fermi temperature.

Quantum fluids of self-assembled chains of polar molecules.

We study polar molecules in a stack of strongly confined pancake traps. When dipole moments point perpendicular to the planes of the traps and are sufficiently strong, the system is stable against collapse but attractive interaction between molecules in different layers leads to the formation of dipolar chains, analogously to the chaining phenomenon in classical rheological electro- and magnetofluids. We analyze properties of the resulting quantum liquid of dipolar chains and show that only the longest chains undergo Bose-Einstein condensation with a strongly reduced condensation temperature. We discuss several experimental methods for studying chains of polar molecules.

Effect of quantum fluctuations on the dipolar motion of bose-einstein condensates in optical lattices.

We reexamine dipolar motion of condensate atoms in one-dimensional optical lattices and harmonic magnetic traps including quantum fluctuations within the truncated Wigner approximation. In the strong tunneling limit we reproduce the mean field results with a sharp dynamical transition at the critical displacement. When the tunneling is reduced, on the contrary, strong quantum fluctuations lead to finite damping of condensate oscillations even at infinitesimal displacement. We argue that there is a smooth crossover between the chaotic classical transition at finite displacement and the superfluid-to-insulator phase transition at zero displacement. We further analyze the time dependence of the density fluctuations and of the coherence of the condensate and find several nontrivial dynamical effects, which can be observed in the present experimental conditions.

Disordered Bose-Einstein condensates in quasi-one-dimensional magnetic microtraps.

We analyze the effects of a random magnetic potential in a microfabricated waveguide for ultracold atoms. We find that the shape and position fluctuations of a current carrying wire induce a strong Gaussian correlated random potential with a length scale set by the atom-wire separation. The theory is used to explain quantitatively the observed fragmentation of the Bose-Einstein condensates in atomic waveguides. Furthermore, we show that nonlinear dynamics can be used to provide important insights into the nature of the strongly fragmented condensates. We argue that a quantum phase transition from the superfluid to the insulating Bose glass phase may be reached and detected under the realistic experimental conditions.