English

Precise determination of the structure factor and contact in a unitary Fermi gas

Quantum Gases 2013-02-06 v2

Abstract

We present a high-precision determination of the universal contact parameter in a strongly interacting Fermi gas. In a trapped gas at unitarity we find the contact to be 3.06±0.083.06 \pm 0.08 at a temperature of 0.08 of the Fermi temperature in a harmonic trap. The contact governs the high-momentum (short-range) properties of these systems and this low temperature measurement provides a new benchmark for the zero temperature homogeneous contact. The experimental measurement utilises Bragg spectroscopy to obtain the dynamic and static structure factors of ultracold Fermi gases at high momentum in the unitarity and molecular Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) regimes. We have also performed quantum Monte Carlo calculations of the static properties, extending from the weakly coupled Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) regime to the strongly coupled BEC case, which show agreement with experiment at the level of a few percent.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1209.3830,
  title  = {Precise determination of the structure factor and contact in a unitary Fermi gas},
  author = {Sascha Hoinka and Marcus Lingham and Kristian Fenech and Hui Hu and Chris J. Vale and Joaquín E. Drut and Stefano Gandolfi},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1209.3830},
  year   = {2013}
}

Comments

Replaced with accepted version