High-temperature superfluidity in an ultracold Fermi gas
Name
172998299-MIT.pdf
Description
Full printable version
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18.98 MB
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Checksum (MD5)
8c608899a71b699dc4b6aff99adbb78f
Author(s)
Zwierlein, Martin W
Advisor(s)
Wolfgang Ketterle.
Date Issued
2007
Publisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Abstract
This thesis presents experiments in which a strongly interacting gas of fermions was brought into the superfluid regime. The strong interactions are induced by a Feshbach scattering resonance that allows to tune the interfermion scattering length via an external magnetic field. When a Fermi mixture was cooled on the molecular side of such a Feshbach resonance, Bose-Einstein condensation of up to 107 molecules was observed. Subsequently, the crossover region interpolating between such a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) of molecules and a Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer superfluid of long-range Cooper pairs was studied. Condensates of fermion pairs were detected in a regime where pairing is purely a many-body effect, the pairs being stabilized by the presence of the surrounding particles. Superfluidity and phase coherence in these systems was directly demonstrated throughout the crossover via the observation of long-lived, ordered vortex lattices in a rotating Fermi mixture. Finally, superfluidity in imbalanced Fermi mixtures was established, and its Clogston limit was observed for high imbalance. The gas was found to separate into a region of equal densities, surrounded by a shell at unequal densities.
Description
Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Physics, February 2007.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 258-280).
Subjects
Physics.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics
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