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arXiv:cond-mat/0307088 · Physical Review Letters

Collisions in Zero Temperature Fermi Gases

Subhadeep Gupta, Zoran Hadzibabic, J. R. Anglin, Wolfgang Ketterle

Published Mar 12, 2004• 26 citations
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Abstract

We examine the collisional behavior of two-component Fermi gases released at zero temperature from a harmonic trap. Using a phase-space formalism to calculate the collision rate during expansion, we find that Pauli blocking plays only a minor role for momentum changing collisions. As a result, for a large scattering cross section, Pauli blocking will not prevent the gas from entering the collisionally hydrodynamic regime. In contrast to the bosonic case, hydrodynamic expansion at very low temperatures is therefore not evidence for fermionic superfluidity.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.92.100401

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We examine the collisional behavior of two-component Fermi gases released at zero temperature from a harmonic trap. Using a phase-space formalism to calculate the collision rate during expansion, we find that Pauli blocking plays only a minor role for momentum changing collisions. As a result, for a large scattering cross section, Pauli blocking will not prevent the gas from entering the collisionally hydrodynamic regime. In contrast to the bosonic case, hydrodynamic expansion at very low temperatures is therefore not evidence for fermionic superfluidity.
We develop a numerical method to study the dynamics of a two-component atomic Fermi gas trapped inside a harmonic potential at temperature T well below the Fermi temperature TF.{T}_{F}.TF​. We examine the transition from the collisionless to the collisional regime down to T=0.2TFT=0.2{T}_{F}T=0.2TF​ and find a good qualitative agreement with the experiments of B. DeMarco and D.S. Jin [Phys. Rev. Lett. 88, 040405 (2002)]. We demonstrate a twofold role of temperature on the collision rate and on the efficiency of collisions. In particular, we observe a hitherto unreported effect, namely, the transition to hydrodynamic behavior is shifted towards lower collision rates as temperature decreases.
This thesis theoretically deals with collective modes in the normal phase of a Bose-Fermi mixture composed of single-species bosons and single-species fermions.The mixture is experimentally established as an ultracold atomic gas.While the community studies the mixture including a superfluid phase, relevant to Bose-Einstein condensation of bosons and Cooper paring of fermions, dynamical behaviors in the normal phase have been not fully understood so that we are interested in.We consider the mixture in both spatially uniform and harmonically trapped systems with the Boltzmann equation at finite temperatures.We perform the analysis under the assumption that the physical quantities are near to equilibrium.After the linerization, we apply the moment method to the equation, obtaining a closed set of coupled equations to describe sound or oscillation.The collisional property of the system characterizes the collective modes in the sense of the hydrodynamic regime, collisionless regime, and transition between these regimes.In the uniform system, we investigate sound mode and the dynamic density structure factor.With decreasing temperature, we find that the sound velocity deviates from that of the hydrodynamic mode.Even at a temperature much lower than the Fermi temperature, the sound velocity does not reach the collisionless limit analogous to the zero sound in a Fermi system.However, we show the existence of a long-lived sound at a low temperature as distinct from the first and zero sounds.Nature of the long-lived sound seems to be originated by Pauli blocking of fermions; this statistical effect makes the interspecies collision suppress in the Bose-Fermi mixture.In the trapped system, we mainly study dipole oscillation.We consistently define the relaxation time originated by the interspecies scattering.We find that two oscillating modes in the collisionless regime have distinct fates in the hydrodynamic regime; one collisionless mode shows a crossover to a hydrodynamic in-phase mode, and the other collisionless mode shows a transition to two purely-damped modes.We show the time evolution of the three types of hydrodynamic modes with suitable initial conditions.We discuss temperature dependence of the dipole modes.We observe that the relaxation time dominates the dependence compared to the mean-field contribution.We also observe the nonmonotonic behavior of the relaxation time when Pauli blocking of fermions is not negligible.i List of Figures 1.1 Two schematic images of collisions with a period of oscillation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1.2 Measurement of the zero sound in pure liquid 3 He . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 1.3 Transition between the first sound and the zero sound in a two-component Fermi gas . . . 3 1.4 Dipole oscillations of the two-component gas of 40 K . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 1.5 Frequencies of dipole mode in the two-component gas of 40 K . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 1.6 Damping times of dipole mode in the two-component gas of 40 K . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 1.7 Dipole oscillations of the mixture of 87 Rb and 40 K in the hydrodynamic regime . . . . . . .6 1.8 Dipole oscillations of the mixture of 87 Rb and 40 K in the deeper hydrodynamic regime . . .6 1.9 Dipole oscillations of the mixture of 87 Rb and 40 K in the collisionless regime . . . . . . . .7 2.1 Results obtained by solving the coupled moment equations for sound mode . . . . . . . . .26 3.1 Time evolution of the center-of-mass positions and velocity fields . . . . . . . . . . . . . .39 3.2 Dipole modes as a function of the relaxation time with N B = N F . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .40 3.3 Dipole modes as a function of the relaxation time with N B /N F = 0.2 . . . . . . . . . . . . .41 3.4 Ratio of the displacement of the center of mass to the velocity field as a function of the relaxation time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
In summary, we use all-optical methods with evaporative cooling near a Feshbach resonance to produce a strongly interacting degenerate Fermi gas. We observe hydrodynamic behavior in the expansion dynamics. At low temperatures, collisions may not explain the expansion dynamics. We observe hydrodynamics in the trapped gas. Our observations include collisionally-damped excitation spectra at high temperature which were not discussed above. In addition, we observe weakly damped breathing modes at low temperature. The observed temperature dependence of the damping time and hydrodynamic frequency are not consistent with collisional dynamics nor with collisionless mean field interactions. These observations constitute the first evidence for superfluid hydrodynamics in a Fermi gas.
Fermionic matter is ubiquitous in nature, from the electrons in metals and semiconductors or the neutrons in the inner crust of neutron stars, to gases of fermionic atoms, like 40K or 6Li that can be created and studied under laboratory conditions. It is especially interesting to study these systems at very low temperatures, where we enter the world of quantum mechanical phenomena. Due to the Fermi-Dirac statistics, a dilute system of spin-polarised fermions exhibits no interactions and can be viewed as an ideal Fermi gas. However, interactions play a crucial role for fermions of several spin species. This thesis addresses several questions concerning interacting Fermi gases, in particular the transition between the normal and the superfluid phase and dynamical properties at higher temperatures. First we will look at the unitary Fermi gas: a two-component system of fermions interacting with divergent scattering length. This system is particularly interesting as it exhibits universal behaviour. Due to the strong interactions perturbation theory is inapplicable and no exact theoretical description is available. I will describe the Determinant Diagrammatic Monte Carlo algorithm with which the unitary Fermi gas can be studied from first principles. This algorithm fails in the presence of a spin imbalance (unequal number of particles in the two components) due to a sign problem. I will show how to apply reweighting techniques to generalise the algorithm to the imbalanced case, and present results for the critical temperature and other thermodynamic observables at the critical point, namely the chemical potential, the energy per particle and the contact density. These are the first numerical results for the imbalanced unitary Fermi gas at finite temperature. I will also show how temperatures beyond the critical point can be accessed and present results for the equation of state and the temperature dependence of the contact density. At sufficiently high temperatures a semiclassical description captures all relevant physical features of the system. The dynamics of an interacting Fermi gas can then be studied via a numerical simulation of the Boltzmann equation. I will describe such a numerical setup and apply it to study the collision of two spin-polarised fermionic clouds. When the two components are separated in an elongated harmonic trap and then released, they collide and for sufficiently strong interactions can bounce off each other several times. I will discuss the different types of the qualitative behaviour, show how they can be interpreted in terms of the equilibrium properties of the system, and explain how they relate to the coupling between different excitation modes. I will also demonstrate how transport coefficients, for instance the spin drag, can be extracted from the numerical data.
Abstract. – We discuss the effects of collisions on the expansion of an ultracold normal Fermi gas, following the sudden removal of the confining trap. Using a Boltzmann equation approach, we calculate the time dependence of the aspect ratio and the temperature increase of the expanding atomic cloud. We find that for dilute gases and standard choices of the trap parameters the aspect ratio does not deviate significantly from the predictions of ballistic expansion. Conversely, if the trap is sufficiently elongated the thermal broadening of the density distribution can be quite large, revealing that even at zero temperature collisions are effective in a Fermi gas. The expansion of an atomic gas following the sudden removal of the confining trap is known to provide valuable information on the state of the system and on the role of interactions [1]. In particular in the superfluid phase, where the macroscopic dynamics of the gas are governed by the equations of hydrodynamics, one expects anisotropic expansion if the gas is released from an anisotropic trap. This peculiar feature, which should be contrasted with the isotropic ballistic expansion exhibited by a non interacting gas, was first discussed in [2,3] in the case
We present a theoretical study of the dynamical behavior of a gas made of ultracold fermionic atoms, which during their motions can collide with a much smaller number of thermal bosonic impurities. The atoms are confined inside harmonic traps and the interactions between the two species are treated as due to sss-wave scattering with a negative scattering length modeling the $^{40}\mathrm{K}\penalty1000-\hskip0pt^{87}\mathrm{Rb}$ fermion-boson system. We set the fermions into motion by giving a small shift to their trap center and examine two alternative types of initial conditions, referring to (i) a close-to-equilibrium situation in which the two species are at the same temperature (well below the Fermi temperature and well above the Bose-Einstein condensation temperature); and (ii) a far-from-equilibrium case in which the impurities are given a Boltzmann distribution of momenta while the fermions are at very low temperatures. The dynamics of the gas is evaluated by the numerical solution of the Vlasov-Landau equations for the one-body distribution functions, supported by some analytical results on the collisional properties of a fermion gas. We find that the trapped gaseous mixture is close to the collisionless regime for values of the parameters corresponding to current experiments, but can be driven towards a collisional regime even without increasing the strength of the interactions, either by going over to heavier impurity masses or by matching the width of the momentum distribution of the impurities to the Fermi momentum of the fermion gas.