Irreversible entropy transport enhanced by fermionic superfluidity

Abstract

The nature of particle and entropy flow between two superfluids is often understood in terms of reversible flow carried by an entropy-free, macroscopic wavefunction. While this wavefunction is responsible for many intriguing properties of superfluids and superconductors, its interplay with excitations in non-equilibrium situations is less understood. Here we observe large concurrent flows of both particles and entropy through a ballistic channel connecting two strongly interacting fermionic superfluids. Both currents respond nonlinearly to chemical potential and temperature biases. We find that the entropy transported per particle is much larger than the prediction of superfluid hydrodynamics in the linear regime and largely independent of changes in the channel’s geometry. By contrast, the timescales of advective and diffusive entropy transport vary significantly with the channel geometry. In our setting, superfluidity counterintuitively increases the speed of entropy transport. Moreover, we develop a phenomenological model describing the nonlinear dynamics within the framework of generalized gradient dynamics. Our approach for measuring entropy currents may help elucidate mechanisms of heat transfer in superfluids and superconducting devices.