Uniform non-interacting gas of fermions

Tara E. Drake

This thesis presents experiments probing the physics of strongly interacting fermionic atoms in the BCS-BEC crossover. Ultracold atom experiments bring the ability to arbitrarily tune interatomic interactions, which allows for unprecedented access to the regime of strongly interacting physics. The majority of cold atom experiments, however, are carried out in an atom trap that imprints an inhomogeneous density on the cloud of atoms. Many phenomena, especially the signatures of phase transitions, are significantly modified by this non-uniform density. In this thesis, I present a novel imaging technique that allows us to probe a region of nearly homogeneous density within a larger, inhomogenenous cloud. Using this technique, I present new results for strongly interacting fermionic atoms, including the first measurements of the contact and the occupied spectral function of a homogeneous Fermi gas, and the first direct observation of the "textbook" momentum distribution of an ideal Fermi gas.

Karl‐Fredrik Berggren, Börje Johansson

P. Buck, Hans Feldmeier

Maria Colomé‐Tatché, Gora V. Shlyapnikov, Alexei M. Tsvelik

We consider a gas of fermions with a short-range attractive intercomponent interaction in a parabolic external potential and derive the conditions of the local density approximation. The obtained spectrum of quasiparticle (isospin) excitations shows equidistant low-energy levels, which is equivalent to a linear momentum dependence and is fundamentally different from the ordinary Dirac spectrum in the spatially uniform case.