Spin transport in polaronic and superfluid Fermi gases

Abstract

We present measurements of spin transport in ultracold gases of fermionic 6Li in a mixture of two spin states at a Feshbach resonance. In particular, we study the spin-dipole mode, where the two spin components are displaced from each other against a harmonic restoring force. We prepare a highly imbalanced, or polaronic, spin mixture with a spin-dipole excitation and we observe strong, unitarity-limited damping of the spin-dipole mode. In gases with small spin imbalance, below the Pauli limit for superfluidity, we observe strongly damped spin flow even in the presence of a superfluid core. This indicates strong mutual friction between superfluid and polarized normal spins, possibly involving Andreev reflection at the superfluid–normal interface.