Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE

Optical trapping and fundamental studies of atomic fermi gases

J. E. Thomas, J. Joseph, Bason E. Clancy, L. Lou, Joseph M. Kinast, Andrei V. Turlapov

Published Aug 31, 2006• 2 citations

Abstract

Optical traps provide tight confinement and very long storage times for atomic gases. Using a single focused beam from a CO2 laser, we confine a mixture of spin-up and spin-down fermionic 6Li atoms, achieving storage times of ten minutes, and evaporative cooling to quantum degeneracy in seconds. A bias magnetic field tunes the gas to a collisional (Feshbach) resonance, producing extremely strong spin-pairing. This system now tests current many-body predictions for high-temperature superconductors, universal interactions in neutron stars, and hydrodynamic flow of quark-gluon plasmas, a state of matter that existed microseconds after the Big Bang.

DOI: 10.1117/12.678574

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