A Three-Component Degenerate Fermi Gas.

S. D. Gensemer, D. S. Jin

Seth T. Rittenhouse, Chris H. Greene

We present a simple implementation of a density-dependent, zero-range interaction in a degenerate Fermi gas using hyperspherical coordinates in the large particle number limit. The method produces a 1D effective potential that accurately describes the ground-state energy as a function of the hyperradius of the two spin component gas throughout the vicinity of the unitarity regime. In the unitarity regime the breathing mode frequency is found to limit to the non-interacting value. A dynamical instability, similar to the Bosenova, is predicted to be possible for a gas containing more than three spin components, for large, negative, two-body scattering lengths. While the situation is less clear for the gas with three components, collapse might also be possible.

Hui Zhai

T. B. Ottenstein, Thomas Lompe, M. Kohnen +2 more

We report on the creation of a degenerate Fermi gas consisting of a balanced mixture of atoms in three different hyperfine states of 6Li. This new system consists of three distinguishable fermions with different and tunable interparticle scattering lengths a_{12}, a_{13}, and a_{23}. We are able to prepare samples containing 5x10;{4} atoms in each state at a temperature of about 215 nK, which corresponds to T/T_{F} approximately 0.37. We investigated the collisional stability of the gas for magnetic fields between 0 and 600 G and found a prominent loss feature at 130 G. From lifetime measurements, we determined three-body loss coefficients, which vary over nearly 3 orders of magnitude.

Michael G. Bowler

Jason Williams, E.L. Hazlett, J. H. Huckans +3 more

We observe enhanced three-body recombination in a three-component ;{6}Li Fermi gas attributable to an excited Efimov trimer state intersecting the three-atom scattering threshold near 895 G. From measurements of the recombination rate we determine the Efimov parameters kappa_{*} and eta_{*} for the universal region above 600 G which includes three overlapping Feshbach resonances. The value of kappa_{*} also predicts the locations of loss features previously observed near 130 and 500 G [T. B. Ottenstein, Phys. Rev. Lett. 101, 203202 (2008)10.1103/PhysRevLett.101.203202; J. H. Huckans, Phys. Rev. Lett. 102, 165302 (2009)10.1103/PhysRevLett.102.165302] suggesting they are associated with a ground-state Efimov trimer near threshold. We also report on the realization of a degenerate three-component Fermi gas with approximate SU(3) symmetry.