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arXiv:1711.00071 · Physics-Uspekhi

Physics of our Days: Cooling and thermometry of atomic Fermi gases

Roberto Onofrio

Published Oct 25, 2016• 101 citations
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Abstract

Abstract We review the status of cooling techniques aimed at achieving the deepest quantum degeneracy for atomic Fermi gases. We first discuss some physics motivations, providing a quantitative assessment of the need for deep quantum degeneracy in relevant physics cases, such as the search for unconventional superfluid states. Attention is then focused on the most widespread technique to reach deep quantum degeneracy for Fermi systems, sympathetic cooling of Bose–Fermi mixtures, organizing the discussion according to the specific species involved. Various proposals to circumvent some of the limitations on achieving the deepest Fermi degeneracy, and their experimental realizations, are then reviewed. Finally, we discuss the extension of these techniques to optical lattices and the implementation of precision thermometry crucial to the understanding of the phase diagram of classical and quantum phase transitions in Fermi gases.

DOI
10.3367/ufne.2016.07.037873

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Abstract We review the status of cooling techniques aimed at achieving the deepest quantum degeneracy for atomic Fermi gases. We first discuss some physics motivations, providing a quantitative assessment of the need for deep quantum degeneracy in relevant physics cases, such as the search for unconventional superfluid states. Attention is then focused on the most widespread technique to reach deep quantum degeneracy for Fermi systems, sympathetic cooling of Bose–Fermi mixtures, organizing the discussion according to the specific species involved. Various proposals to circumvent some of the limitations on achieving the deepest Fermi degeneracy, and their experimental realizations, are then reviewed. Finally, we discuss the extension of these techniques to optical lattices and the implementation of precision thermometry crucial to the understanding of the phase diagram of classical and quantum phase transitions in Fermi gases.
The study of low density, ultracold atomic Fermi gases is a promising avenue to understand fermion superfluidity from first principles. One technique currently used to bring Fermi gases in the degenerate regime is sympathetic cooling through a reservoir made of an ultracold Bose gas. We discuss a proposal for trapping and cooling of two-species Fermi-Bose mixtures into optical dipole traps made from combinations of laser beams having two different wavelengths. In these bichromatic traps it is possible, by a proper choice of the relative laser powers, to selectively trap the two species in such a way that fermions experience a stronger confinement than bosons. As a consequence, a deep Fermi degeneracy can be reached having at the same time a softer degenerate regime for the Bose gas. This leads to an increase in the sympathetic cooling efficiency and allows for higher precision thermometry of the Fermi - Bose mixture.
We compare strategies for evaporative and sympathetic cooling of two-species Fermi-Bose mixtures in single-color and two-color optical dipole traps. We show that in the latter case a large heat capacity of the bosonic species can be maintained during the entire cooling process. This could allow one to efficiently achieve a deep Fermi degeneracy regime having at the same time a significant thermal fraction for the Bose gas, crucial for a precise thermometry of the mixture. Two possible signatures of a superfluid phase transition for the Fermi species are discussed.
We discuss fast frictionless cooling techniques in the framework of sympathetic cooling of cold atomic mixtures. It is argued that optimal cooling of an atomic species---in which the deepest quantum degeneracy regime is achieved---may be obtained by means of sympathetic cooling with another species whose trapping frequency is dynamically changed to maintain constancy of the Lewis-Riesenfeld adiabatic invariant. Advantages and limitations of this cooling strategy are discussed, with particular regard to the possibility of cooling Fermi gases to a deeper degenerate regime.
We propose the use of a combined optical dipole trap to achieve Fermi degeneracy by sympathetic cooling with a different bosonic species. Two far-detuned pairs of laser beams focused on the atomic clouds are used to confine the two atomic species with different trapping strengths. We show that a deep Fermi degeneracy regime can be potentially achieved earlier than Bose-Einstein condensation, as discussed in the favorable situation of a 6Li-23Na mixture. This opens up the possibility of experimentally investigating a mixture of superfluid Fermi and normal Bose gases.
The standard approach for generating deeply degenerate quantum gases is evaporative or sympathetic cooling in a harmonic trap, after which the gas has reached its minimum entropy. All subsequent state transformations rely on adiabatic changes of a closed system, and coupling to the environment or non-adiabatic processes monotonically increase the entropy. Here, we demonstrate that this experimental paradigm can be bypassed by utilizing species-selective trapping with a low-dissipation optical tune-out trap in a dual-species mixture. We successfully reduce the entropy of a two-component fermionic quantum gas via isothermal compression within a bosonic bath, reaching deep quantum degeneracy of T/TF=0.024+0.007T/T_F = 0.024^{+0.007}T/TF​=0.024+0.007, with TFT_FTF​ the Fermi temperature. By characterizing the cross-dimensional relaxation and thermalization, we demonstrate that cooling light fermions with heavy bosons remains efficient and fast, even deep in the degenerate regime, where the thermalization time is found to be independent of T/TFT/T_FT/TF​. Our results pave the way for direct cooling within optical lattices, box traps, or other complex potentials, thereby eliminating the reliance on adiabatic state transformations to reach strongly interacting many-body regimes.
We discuss the cooling efficiency of ultracold Fermi-Bose mixtures in species-selective traps using a thermodynamical approach. The dynamics of evaporative cooling trajectories is analyzed in the specific case of bichromatic optical dipole traps also taking into account the effect of partial spatial overlap between the Fermi gas and the thermal component of the Bose gas. We show that large trapping frequency ratios between the Fermi and the Bose species allow for the achievement of a deeper Fermi degeneracy, consolidating in a thermodynamic setting earlier arguments based on more restrictive assumptions. In particular, we confirm that the minimum temperature of the mixture is obtained at the crossover between boson and fermion heat capacities, and that below such a temperature sympathetic cooling vanishes. When the effect of partial overlap is taken into account, optimal sympathetic cooling of the Fermi species may be achieved by properly tuning the relative trapping strength of the two species in a time-dependent fashion. Alternatively, the dimensionality of the trap in the final stage of cooling can be changed by increasing the confinement strength, which also results in a crossover of the heat capacities at deeper Fermi degeneracies. This technique may be extended to Fermi-Bose degenerate mixtures in optical lattices.