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arXiv:cond-mat/0308519 · Physical Review Letters

Detection of Spatial Correlations in an Ultracold Gas of Fermions

Markus Greiner, Cindy A. Regal, Christopher Ticknor, John L. Bohn, D. S. Jin

Published Apr 15, 2004• 34 citations
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Abstract

Spatial correlations are observed in an ultracold gas of fermionic atoms close to a Feshbach resonance. The correlations are detected by inducing spin-changing rf transitions between pairs of atoms. We observe the process in the strongly interacting regime for attractive as well as for repulsive atom-atom interactions and both in the regime of high and low quantum degeneracy. The observations are compared with a two-particle model that provides theoretical predictions for the measured rf transition rates.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.92.150405

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Spatial correlations are observed in an ultracold gas of fermionic atoms close to a Feshbach resonance. The correlations are detected by inducing spin-changing rf transitions between pairs of atoms. We observe the process in the strongly interacting regime for attractive as well as for repulsive atom-atom interactions and both in the regime of high and low quantum degeneracy. The observations are compared with a two-particle model that provides theoretical predictions for the measured rf transition rates.
An ultracold Fermi gas with repulsive interaction has been studied. For weak interactions, the atomic gas is metastable, and the interactions were characterized by obtaining the isothermal compressibility from atomic density profiles. For stronger interactions (kFa ≈ 1), rapid conversion into Feshbach molecules is observed. When the conversion rate becomes comparable to the Fermi energy divided by η, the atomic gas cannot reach equilibrium without forming pairs. This precludes the predicted transition to a ferromagnetic state (Stoner transition). The absence of spin fluctuations proves that the gas stays paramagnetic. In free space, a Fermi gas with strong short-range repulsion does not exist because of the rapid coupling to molecular states.
Ultracold atomic Fermi gases close to Feshbach resonances represent the ideal platform to study strongly correlated fermionic states [1]. Up to now, most of the experimental efforts have been dedicated to the study of the famous BEC-BCS crossover, i.e. the transition from a Bose-Einstein condensate of tightly bound molecules to a BCS superfluid of long-range fermion pairs. However, such fermionic gases are the ideal environment to explore also the effects of strong, repulsive interactions. The interest in studying repulsive Fermi gases is manifold, since many phase transitions are driven by the strong repulsion between electrons in solids. One notable example is represented by the onset of itinerant ferromagnetism in metals, as envisioned by Stoner almost ninety years ago.
A degenerate Fermi gas is rapidly quenched into the regime of strong effective repulsion near a Feshbach resonance. The spin fluctuations are monitored using speckle imaging and, contrary to several theoretical predictions, the samples remain in the paramagnetic phase for an arbitrarily large scattering length. Over a wide range of interaction strengths a rapid decay into bound pairs is observed over times on the order of 10ℏ/E[subscript F], preventing the study of equilibrium phases of strongly repulsive fermions. Our work suggests that a Fermi gas with strong short-range repulsive interactions does not undergo a ferromagnetic phase transition.
A degenerate Fermi gas is rapidly quenched into the regime of strong effective repulsion near a Feshbach resonance. The spin fluctuations are monitored using speckle imaging and, contrary to several theoretical predictions, the samples remain in the paramagnetic phase for an arbitrarily large scattering length. Over a wide range of interaction strengths a rapid decay into bound pairs is observed over times on the order of 10ℏ/E(F), preventing the study of equilibrium phases of strongly repulsive fermions. Our work suggests that a Fermi gas with strong short-range repulsive interactions does not undergo a ferromagnetic phase transition.
The nature of the normal phase of strongly correlated fermionic systems is an outstanding question in quantum many-body physics. We used spatially resolved radio-frequency spectroscopy to measure pairing energy of fermions across a wide range of temperatures and interaction strengths in a two-dimensional gas of ultracold fermionic atoms. We observed many-body pairing at temperatures far above the critical temperature for superfluidity. In the strongly interacting regime, the pairing energy in the normal phase considerably exceeds the intrinsic two-body binding energy of the system and shows a clear dependence on local density. This implies that pairing in this regime is driven by many-body correlations, rather than two-body physics. Our findings show that pairing correlations in strongly interacting two-dimensional fermionic systems are remarkably robust against thermal fluctuations.
We measure nonlocal third-order spatial correlations in nondegenerate ultracold gases of bosonic (84Sr^{84}\mathrm{Sr}84Sr) and spin-polarized fermionic (87Sr^{87}\mathrm{Sr}87Sr) strontium through studies of the formation rates for ultralong-range trimer Rydberg molecules. The trimer production rate is observed to be very sensitive to the effects of quantum statistics with a strong enhancement of up to a factor of 6 (3!), in the case of bosonic 84Sr^{84}\mathrm{Sr}84Sr due to bunching and a marked reduction for spin-polarized fermionic 87Sr^{87}\mathrm{Sr}87Sr due to antibunching. The experimental results are compared to theoretical predictions and good agreement is observed. The present approach opens the way to in situ studies of higher-order nonlocal spatial correlations in a wide array of ultracold atomic-gas systems.