Radio-frequency spectroscopy of ultracold atomic Fermi gases

This thesis presents experiments investigating the phase diagram of ultracold atomic Fermi gases using radio-frequency spectroscopy. The tunability of many experimental parameters including the temperature, the interparticle interaction strength and the relative population of different Fermions allows to access very different physical regimes. Radio-frequency spectroscopy has been developed into an ideal tool to probe correlations between particles in these different phases. In particular, radio-frequency spectroscopy of highly population imbalanced atomic Fermi systems gives access to the impurity problem: A single Fermion, or Boson, immersed in a sea of Fermions constitutes a polaron, which can be described by Landau's Fermi liquid theory. A critical interaction strength can be identified separating the regime of a fermionic polaron and a bosonic polaron. Radio-frequency spectroscopy of the polarized superfluid phase allows an accurate measure of the superfluid gap [Delta] and allows to identify the importance of Hartree Mean-field energies. Furthermore, it is shown how these different physical regimes are connected.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Physics.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2010

Author dc:creator

• Schirotzek, Andre

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Wolfgang Ketterle and Martin W. Zwierlein.

• Physics.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/77482

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/77482