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Pairing of fermionic lithium-6 throughout the BEC-BCS crossover

Guthrie B. Partridge

Published Jan 1, 2007• 0 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

The pairing of fermionic particles is an essential ingredient of superconductivity and of the superfluidity of 3He. While such phenomena are accurately described by BCS theory in the limit of weak pairing strength, a complete understanding remains elusive when pairing strength is increased, such as in high temperature superconductors. We create ultracold gases of trapped fermionic 6Li atoms, through which we directly observe fermionic pairing. In our system, there are no impurities whatsoever, and parameters such as the number and temperature of the trapped atoms are precisely and independently controlled. In addition, a Feshbach resonance enables the continuous tuning of interaction strength and sign between the paired atoms. This control allows us to observe the smooth crossover of a molecular Bose Einstein condensate (MBEC) to a superfluid of weakly interacting Cooper pairs. With these tools, we have performed several fundamental measurements of pairing in fermionic systems.\nWe use optical molecular spectroscopy to precisely measure the closed-channel contribution to the many body state of paired 6Li atoms within a broad Feshbach resonance. The magnitude of this contribution is small, and supports the concept of universality for the description of broad Feshbach resonances. Moreover, the dynamics of the excitation provide clear evidence for pairing across the BEC-BCS crossover, and for the first time, into the weakly interacting BCS regime.\nWe also prepare a polarized Fermi gas with unequal numbers of two spin states of 6Li atoms. The real-space densities of the polarized, strongly-interacting, two-component Fermi gas reveal two low temperature regimes. At the lowest temperatures, the gas separates into a phase with a uniformly paired superfluid core surrounded by a shell of normal, unpaired atoms. This phase separation is accompanied by a spatial deformation of the core. At higher temperatures, the uniformly paired core persists, though it does not deform. This temperature dependence is consistent with a tri-critical point in the phase diagram. These measurements of pairing in a polarized Fermi gas are relevant to predictions of exotic phases of quark matter and magnetized superconductors.

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The pairing of fermionic particles is an essential ingredient of superconductivity and of the superfluidity of 3He. While such phenomena are accurately described by BCS theory in the limit of weak pairing strength, a complete understanding remains elusive when pairing strength is increased, such as in high temperature superconductors. We create ultracold gases of trapped fermionic 6Li atoms, through which we directly observe fermionic pairing. In our system, there are no impurities whatsoever, and parameters such as the number and temperature of the trapped atoms are precisely and independently controlled. In addition, a Feshbach resonance enables the continuous tuning of interaction strength and sign between the paired atoms. This control allows us to observe the smooth crossover of a molecular Bose Einstein condensate (MBEC) to a superfluid of weakly interacting Cooper pairs. With these tools, we have performed several fundamental measurements of pairing in fermionic systems.\nWe use optical molecular spectroscopy to precisely measure the closed-channel contribution to the many body state of paired 6Li atoms within a broad Feshbach resonance. The magnitude of this contribution is small, and supports the concept of universality for the description of broad Feshbach resonances. Moreover, the dynamics of the excitation provide clear evidence for pairing across the BEC-BCS crossover, and for the first time, into the weakly interacting BCS regime.\nWe also prepare a polarized Fermi gas with unequal numbers of two spin states of 6Li atoms. The real-space densities of the polarized, strongly-interacting, two-component Fermi gas reveal two low temperature regimes. At the lowest temperatures, the gas separates into a phase with a uniformly paired superfluid core surrounded by a shell of normal, unpaired atoms. This phase separation is accompanied by a spatial deformation of the core. At higher temperatures, the uniformly paired core persists, though it does not deform. This temperature dependence is consistent with a tri-critical point in the phase diagram. These measurements of pairing in a polarized Fermi gas are relevant to predictions of exotic phases of quark matter and magnetized superconductors.
The study of ultracold trapped fermionic gases is a rapidly exploding subject [1-10] which is defining new directions in condensed matter and atomic physics. It has also captured the attention of physicists who study color superconducting quark matter as well as nuclear matter [11-13]. Indeed, it is hard, in recent times, to find a subfield of physics which appeals this broadly to the research community. As we come to understand the gases, experimentalists will move to address fermionic atoms in optical lattices; this will provide important insight to condensed matter physicists as analogue systems for “solving ” intractable many body problems. What makes these gases (and lattices) so important is their remarkable tunability and controllability. Using a Feshbach resonance, one can tune the attractive two-body interaction from weak to strong, and thereby make a smooth crossover from a BCS superfluid to a Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) [14, 15]. Not only does this allow high transition temperatures Tc (relative to the Fermi energy EF) but it may also provide insights into the high temperature cuprate superconductivity [16-19]. Furthermore, one can tune the population of the two spin states, essentially at will, in this way, allowing exploration [20-22] of exotic polarized phases such as the FFLO [23-25] superfluids, of interest to condensed matter, nuclear and particle physicists. One will be able to tune the lattice parameters such as bandwidth, on-site repulsion, even random disorder, etc and thereby study the famous, and as yet, unsolved Hubbard model Hamiltonian. This paper will concentrate on those issues relating to the effects which are of current interest to experimentalists. In particular, we will study BCS-BEC crossover in atomic Fermi gases, looking at a wide range of different experiments. Our group has been principally interested in the effects of finite temperature [26, 17, 18] and in this review, we will discuss how temperature T enters into the standard crossover theory, and how temperature can be measured, and how temc○
We have used optical molecular spectroscopy to probe the many-body state of paired 6Li atoms near a broad Feshbach resonance. The optical probe projects pairs of atoms onto a vibrational level of an excited molecule. The rate of excitation enables a precise measurement of the closed-channel contribution to the paired state. This contribution is found to be quite small, supporting the concept of universality for the description of broad Feshbach resonances. The dynamics of the excitation provide clear evidence for pairing across the BEC-BCS crossover and into the weakly interacting BCS regime.
This thesis presents experiments probing physics in the crossover between Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) and BCS superconductivity using an ultracold gas of atomic fermions. Scattering resonances in these ultracold gases (known as Feshbach resonances) provide the unique ability to tune the fermion-fermion interactions. The work presented here pioneered the use of fermionic Feshbach resonances as a highly controllable and tunable system ideal for studying the cusp of the BCS-BEC crossover problem. Here pairs of fermionic atoms have some properties of diatomic molecules and some properties of Cooper pairs. I present studies of a normal Fermi gas at a Feshbach resonance and the work required to cool the gas to temperatures where superfluidity in the crossover is predicted. These studies culminated in our observation of a phase transition at the cusp of the BCS-BEC crossover through condensation of fermionic atom pairs. I also discuss subsequent work that confirmed the crossover nature of the pairs in these condensates.
A trapped Fermi gas near a collisional resonance provides a unique laboratory for testing many-body theories in a variety of fields. The ultracold Fermi gas produced in our lab is comprised of the lowest two spin states of 6^66Li. At 834 G there is a collisional or Feshbach resonance between the two spin states. The scattering length between trapped atoms of opposing spins far exceeds the interparticle spacing of the gas. On resonance, a strongly interacting, unitary, Fermi gas is created which exhibits universal behavior. The unitary Fermi gas is a prototype for other exotic systems in nature from nuclear matter to neutron stars and high temperature superconductors. \n For magnetic fields less than 834 G the scattering length is positive, and pairs Fermi atoms can form molecular dimers. These dimers, comprised of two fermions, are bosons. At ultracold temperatures the molecular bosons populate the lowest energy level and form a Bose Einstein Condensate (BEC). For magnetic fields greater than 834G the scattering length between fermions in opposing spin states is negative, like Cooper pairs formed between electrons in a superconductor. The Bardeen, Cooper, and Shriefer (BCS) theory was developed to describe the pairing effect in the context of superconductors. In our experiment we produce an ultracold unitary gas. By tuning the magnetic field to either side of the Feshbach resonance we can transform the gas into a weakly interacting BEC or BCS superfluid. Therefore, the region near a Feshbach resonance is called the BEC-BCS crossover. \n This dissertation presents a precision measurement of the hydrodynamic sound velocity in an ultracold Fermi gas near a Feshbach resonance. The sound velocity is measured at various magnetic fields both above and below resonance. Moreover, we are able compare our measurements to theoretical descriptions of hydrodynamic sound propagation. Further, our measurement of sound velocity exactly reproduces the non-perturbative case, eliminating the need to consider nonlinear effects. At resonance the sound velocity exhibits universal scaling with the Fermi velocity to within 1.8\\% over a factor of 30 in density. In a near zero temperature unitary gas the average sound velocity at the axial center was measured, c(0)/vFc(0)/v_Fc(0)/vF​ = 0.364(0.005), as well as the universal constant, beta\\betabeta = -0.565(0.015). The measurement of sound velocity in an ultracold gas throughout the BEC-BCS crossover provides further evidence of the continuous connection between the physics of the BEC, unitary, and BCS systems.
We present a comprehensive study of the Bose-Einstein condensate to Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BEC-BCS) crossover in fermionic 6Li using Bragg spectroscopy. A smooth transition from molecular to atomic spectra is observed with a clear signature of pairing at and above unitarity. These spectra probe the dynamic and static structure factors of the gas and provide a direct link to two-body correlations. We have characterized these correlations and measured their density dependence across the broad Feshbach resonance at 834 G.
We study resonantly-paired s-wave superfluidity in a degenerate gas of two species (hyperfine states labeled by ↑, ↓) of fermionic atoms when the numbers N↑ and N↓ of the two species are unequal, i.e., the system is "polarized." We find that the continuous crossover from the Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) limit of tightly-bound diatomic molecules to the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) limit of weakly correlated Cooper pairs, studied extensively at equal populations, is interrupted by a variety of distinct phenomena under an imposed population difference ΔN ≡ N↑ - N↓. Our findings are summarized by a "polarization" (ΔN) versus Feshbach-resonance detuning (δ) zero-temperature phase diagram, which exhibits regions of phase separation, a periodic FFLO superfluid, a polarized normal Fermi gas and a polarized molecular superfluid consisting of a molecular condensate and a fully polarized Fermi gas. We describe numerous experimental signatures of such phases and the transitions between them, in particular focusing on their spatial structure in the inhomogeneous environment of an atomic trap. © 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.