We present a comprehensive study of the Bose-Einstein condensate to Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BEC-BCS) crossover in fermionic $^6$Li using Bragg spectroscopy. A smooth transition from molecular to atomic spectra is observed with a clear signature of pairing at and above unitarity. These spectra probe the dynamic and static structure factors of the gas and provide a direct link to two-body correlations. We have characterised these correlations and measured their density dependence across the broad Feshbach resonance at 834 G.
We study Bragg spectroscopy of a strongly interacting Bose-Einstein condensate using time-dependent Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov theory. We include approximatively the effect of the momentum dependent scattering amplitude which is shown to be the dominant factor in determining the spectrum for large momentum Bragg scattering. The condensation of the Bragg scattered atoms is shown to significantly alter the observed excitation spectrum by creating a novel pairing channel of mobile pairs.
We investigate the lifetime of angular momentum in an ultracold strongly interacting Fermi gas, confined in a trap with controllable ellipticity. To determine the angular momentum we measure the precession of the radial quadrupole mode. We find that in the vicinity of a Feshbach resonance the deeply hydrodynamic behavior in the normal phase leads to a very long lifetime of the angular momentum. Furthermore, we examine the dependence of the decay rate of the angular momentum on the ellipticity of the trapping potential and the interaction strength. The results are in general agreement with the theoretically expected behavior for a Boltzmann gas.
We report on measurements of an elementary surface mode in an ultracold, strongly interacting Fermi gas of 6Li atoms. The radial quadrupole mode allows us to probe hydrodynamic behavior in the BEC-BCS crossover without being influenced by changes in the equation of state. We examine frequency and damping of this mode, along with its expansion dynamics. In the unitarity limit and on the BEC side of the resonance, the observed frequencies agree with standard hydrodynamic theory. However, on the BCS side of the crossover, a striking down shift of the oscillation frequency is observed in the hydrodynamic regime as a precursor to an abrupt transition to collisionless behavior; this indicates coupling of the oscillation to fermionic pairs.
We report on the observation of Bragg scattering of an ultracold Fermi gas of 6Li atoms at a dynamic optical potential. The momentum states produced in this way oscillate in the trap for time scales on the order of seconds, nearly unperturbed by collisions, which are absent for ultracold fermions due to the Pauli principle. In contrast, interactions in a mixture with 87Rb atoms lead to rapid damping. The coherence of these states is demonstrated by Ramsey-type matter wave interferometry. The signal is improved using an echo pulse sequence, allowing us to observe coherence times longer than 100 mus. Finally we use Bragg spectroscopy to measure the in-situ momentum distribution of the 6Li cloud. Signatures for the degeneracy of the Fermi gas can be observed directly from the momentum distribution of the atoms inside the trap.
Bragg spectroscopy is used to measure excitations of a trapped, quantum-degenerate gas of 87Rb atoms in a 3-dimensional optical lattice. The measurements are carried out over a range of optical lattice depths in the superfluid phase of the Bose-Hubbard model. For fixed wavevector, the resonant frequency of the excitation is found to decrease with increasing lattice depth. A numerical calculation of the resonant frequencies based on Bogoliubov theory shows a less steep rate of decrease than the measurements.