Observation of shock waves in a strongly interacting Fermi gas
Quantum Gases
2012-01-18 v1 Strongly Correlated Electrons
Abstract
We study collisions between two strongly interacting atomic Fermi gas clouds. We observe exotic nonlinear hydrodynamic behavior, distinguished by the formation of a very sharp and stable density peak as the clouds collide and subsequent evolution into a box-like shape. We model the nonlinear dynamics of these collisions using quasi-1D hydrodynamic equations. Our simulations of the time-dependent density profiles agree very well with the data and provide clear evidence of shock wave formation in this universal quantum hydrodynamic system.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1012.2885,
title = {Observation of shock waves in a strongly interacting Fermi gas},
author = {James Joseph and John E. Thomas and Manas Kulkarni and Alexander G. Abanov},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1012.2885},
year = {2012}
}