Thermodynamic Measurements in a Strongly Interacting Fermi Gas
Le Luo, John E. Thomas
transition, critical parameters Abstract Strongly interacting Fermi gases provide a clean and controllable laboratory system for modeling strong interparticle interactions between fermions in nature, from high temperature superconductors to neutron matter and quark-gluon plasmas. Model-independent thermodynamic measurements, which do not require theoretical models for calibrations, are very important for exploring this important system experimentally, as they enable direct tests of predictions based on the best current non-perturbative many-body theories. At Duke University, we use all-optical methods to produce a strongly interacting Fermi gas of spin-1/2-up and spin-1/2-down 6 Li atoms that is magnetically tuned near a collisional (Feshbach) resonance. We conduct a series of measurements on the thermodynamic properties of this unique quantum gas, including the energy E, entropy S, and sound velocity c. Our model-independent measurements of E and S enable a precision study of the finite temperature thermodynamics. The E(S) data are directly compared to several recent predictions. The temperature in both the superfluid and normal fluid
•Nov 26, 2012•73 citations