Project Details
Projekt
Superfluidity in two species Fermi-Fermi mixtures
Applicant
Dr. Kai Dieckmann
Subject Area
Optics, Quantum Optics and Physics of Atoms, Molecules and Plasmas
Term
from 2007 to 2011
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 28567861
The main goal of this project is to realize and study quantum gas of two fermionic atomic species in the strongly interacting regime in the vicinity of a Feshbach resonance. Such a Fermi-Fermi mixture is expected to have a long lifetime, as inelastic decay is suppressed by the Pauli Exclusion Principle. Points of interest to study are the formation of heteronuclear molecules and the effect of the mass difference on the superfluid phase near the resonance. The former is related to the far goal of transferring the molecules to their absolute ground state and thus creating a quantum gas with dipolar interaction. As a first step we manipulate and perform spectroscopy of the internal states of the molecules by optical excitation subsequent photoionization detection. The heteronuclear mixture is expected to exhibit a spatially inhomogeneous superfluid phase that is related to the so called LOFF phase that has been predicted to occur in superconductivity. In particular in a one dimensional trapping configuration achieved by an optical lattice potential the density profile can be conveniently detected and compared to exact theoretical solutions. Both directions are examples for the suitability of ultracold fermionic gases to serve as essential models for analogous systems of condensed matter physics.
DFG Programme
Research Units
Participating Person
Professor Dr. Theodor W. Hänsch
