Optically-Trapped Atomic Fermi Gases

John Edward Thomas, Duke University

Optical traps provide tight confinement and very long storage times for atomic gases. Using a single focused beam from a CO_2 laser, we confine a mixture of spin-up and spin-down fermionic lithium atoms, achieving storage times of ten minutes, and evaporative cooling to high degeneracy in seconds. A bias magnetic field tunes the gas to a collisional (Feshbach) resonance, producing extremely strong spin-pairing interactions. This system now tests current many-body predictions for high-temperature superconductors, universal interactions, in neutron stars, and hydrodynamic flow of quark-gluon plasmas.

The P/T Colloquium is
typically held each
Thursday, 3:45–5:00 PM.
Refreshments are served
at 3:15 PM.