Asymmetric Conductivity of the Kondo Effect in Cold Atomic Systems

Abstract

Motivated by recent theoretical and experimental advances in quantum simulations using alkaline earth(AE) atoms, we put forward a proposal to detect the Kondo physics in a cold atomic system. It has been demonstrated that the intrinsic spin-exchange interaction in AE atoms can be significantly enhanced near a confinement-induced resonance(CIR), which facilitates the simulation of Kondo physics. Since the Kondo effect appears only for antiferromagnetic coupling, we find that the conductivity of such a system exhibits an asymmetry across a resonance of spin-exchange interaction. The asymmetric conductivity can serve as the smoking gun evidence for Kondo physics in the cold atom context. When an extra magnetic field ramps up, the spin-exchange process near the Fermi surface is suppressed by Zeeman energy and the conductivity becomes more and more symmetric. Our results can be verified in the current experimental setup.

6 pages, 5 figures