Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Physics, February 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 258-280). / This thesis presents experiments in which a strongly interacting gas of fermions was brought into the superfluid regime. The strong interactions are induced by a Feshbach scattering resonance that allows to tune the interfermion scattering length via an external magnetic field. When a Fermi mixture was cooled on the molecular side of such a Feshbach resonance, Bose-Einstein condensation of up to 107 molecules was observed. Subsequently, the crossover region interpolating between such a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) of molecules and a Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer superfluid of long-range Cooper pairs was studied. Condensates of fermion pairs were detected in a regime where pairing is purely a many-body effect, the pairs being stabilized by the presence of the surrounding particles. Superfluidity and phase coherence in these systems was directly demonstrated throughout the crossover via the observation of long-lived, ordered vortex lattices in a rotating Fermi mixture. Finally, superfluidity in imbalanced Fermi mixtures was established, and its Clogston limit was observed for high imbalance. The gas was found to separate into a region of equal densities, surrounded by a shell at unequal densities. / by Martin W. Zwierlein. / Ph.D.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:MIT/oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/39290 |
| Date | January 2007 |
| Creators | Zwierlein, Martin W |
| Contributors | Wolfgang Ketterle., Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Physics., Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Physics. |
| Publisher | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| Source Sets | M.I.T. Theses and Dissertation |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | 280, [1] leaves, application/pdf |
| Rights | M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission., http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582 |
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