Anomalous Conductances in an Ultracold Quantum Wire

Abstract

We analyze the recently measured anomalous transport properties of an ultracold gas through a ballistic constriction [S. Krinner et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A. 113, 8144 (2016)]. The quantized conductance observed at weak interactions increases severalfold as the gas is made strongly interacting, which cannot be explained by the Landauer theory of single-channel transport. We show that this phenomenon is due to the multichannel Andreev reflections at the edges of the constriction, where the interaction and confinement result in a superconducting state. Andreev processes convert atoms of otherwise reflecting channels into the condensate propagating through the constriction, leading to a significant excess conductance. Furthermore, we find the spin conductance being suppressed by superconductivity; the agreement with experiment provides an additional support for our model.