Pauli Blocking of Collisions in a Quantum Degenerate Atomic Fermi Gas
Abstract
We have produced an interacting quantum degenerate Fermi gas of atoms composed of two spin-states of magnetically trapped K. The relative Fermi energies are adjusted by controlling the population in each spin-state. Measurements of the thermodynamics reveal the resulting imbalance in the mean energy per particle between the two species, which is as large as a factor of 1.4 at our lowest temperature. This imbalance of energy comes from a suppression of collisions between atoms in the gas due to the Pauli exclusion principle. Through measurements of the thermal relaxation rate we have directly observed this Pauli blocking as a factor of two reduction in the effective collision cross-section in the quantum degenerate regime.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0101445,
title = {Pauli Blocking of Collisions in a Quantum Degenerate Atomic Fermi Gas},
author = {B. DeMarco and S. B. Papp and D. S. Jin},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0101445},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
11 pages, 4 figures