Shapiro steps in strongly-interacting Fermi gases

Abstract

Driven many-body systems exhibit diverse and complex dynamical behaviors. Here, we report the observation of Shapiro steps in periodically driven Josephson junctions between strongly interacting Fermi superfluids of ultracold atoms. The height and the width of the observed quantized plateaus in the current-potential characteristics mirror the external drive frequency and the junction nonlinear response. Direct measurements of the current-phase relationship showcase how Shapiro steps arise from the synchronization between the relative phase of the two reservoirs and the external drive. Such a mechanism is further supported by the detection of periodic phase-slippage processes, in the form of vortex-antivortex pairs. Our results are corroborated by a circuital model and numerical simulations. Our work may open prospects for studying emergent nonequilibrium dynamics in quantum many-body systems under external drives.

Affiliated Institutions

• Engineering (Italy) IT
• Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México MX
• Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Sezione di Catania IT
• University of Florence IT
• National Institute of Optics IT
• Università Campus Bio-Medico IT
• University of Catania IT
• Technology Innovation Institute AE

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