Quantum Transport in Strongly Interacting Fermi Gases

Transport is the defining property of states of matter, but often the most difficult to understand. Strongly interacting Fermi gases are especially challenging, despite their ubiquitous presence across many fields of physics. Experiments on ultracold fermionic atoms allow the direct measurement of transport properties in ideal model systems where the hamiltonian is precisely known while transport properties are difficult to calculate theoretically.
In this talk I will present transport measurements on two strongly interacting Fermi systems, the unitary Fermi gas and the Fermi-Hubbard gas, both realized in uniform box potentials. In the unitary gas, we excite first and, in the superfluid regime, also second sound waves and demonstrate a quantum limited sound diffusivity given by hbar over the particle mass. The first and second sound diffusivities give direct access to the thermal conductivity and the viscosity of the gas. For the Fermi-Hubbard gas, realized under a quantum gas microscope, we measure spin diffusion and spin conductivity in the Mott insulator at half filling. For strong interactions, spin diffusion is driven by super-exchange and doublon-hole-assisted tunneling, and strongly violates the quantum limit of charge diffusion. The technique developed in this work can be extended to finite doping, which can shed light on the complex interplay between spin and charge in the Hubbard model.