Understanding the effects of interactions on the ground-state of a paired degenerate Fermi gas throughout the BEC-BCS crossover has been a long standing physical quest for which countless papers have been written. The crossover describes the smooth transition of the physics of a BEC of tightly bound dimers to that of a paired BCS superfluid. A Feshbach resonance is used to tune the interactions necessary to study the crossover. Right around resonance the interactions are expected to be parameterized by a single universal parameter beta [1--3]. This thesis describes a measurement of the axial size of paired, 6Li clouds in the BEC-BCS crossover and provides a comparison with theory. In the BEC regime, absolute measurements of the molecular scattering length are compared with the atomic scattering length and the ratio is compared with theory. Finally, a measurement of beta is made and compared with theory.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:RICE/oai:scholarship.rice.edu:1911/17887 |
| Date | January 2006 |
| Creators | Kamar, Ramsey I. |
| Contributors | Hulet, Randall G. |
| Source Sets | Rice University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis, Text |
| Format | 45 p., application/pdf |
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