We report on the creation of homogeneous Fermi gases of ultracold atoms in a uniform potential. In the momentum distribution of a spin-polarized gas, we observe the emergence of the Fermi surface and the saturated occupation of one particle per momentum state: the striking consequence of Pauli blocking in momentum space for a degenerate gas. Cooling a spin-balanced Fermi gas at unitarity, we create homogeneous superfluids and observe spatially uniform pair condensates. For thermodynamic measurements, we introduce a hybrid potential that is harmonic in one dimension and uniform in the other two. The spatially resolved compressibility reveals the superfluid transition in a spin-balanced Fermi gas, saturation in a fully polarized Fermi gas, and strong attraction in the polaronic regime of a partially polarized Fermi gas.

We study the thermal evolution of a highly spin-imbalanced, homogeneous Fermi gas with unitarity limited interactions, from a Fermi liquid of polarons at low temperatures to a classical Boltzmann gas at high temperatures. Radio-frequency spectroscopy gives access to the energy, lifetime, and short-range correlations of Fermi polarons at low temperatures T . In this regime, we observe a characteristic T 2 dependence of the spectral width, corresponding to the quasiparticle decay rate expected for a Fermi liquid. At high T , the spectral width decreases again towards the scattering rate of the classical, unitary Boltzmann gas, ∝ T −1/2 . In the transition region between the quantum degenerate and classical regime, the spectral width attains its maximum, on the scale of the Fermi energy, indicating the breakdown of a quasiparticle description. Density measurements in a harmonic trap directly reveal the majority dressing cloud surrounding the minority spins and yield the compressibility along with the effective mass of Fermi polarons.Landau's Fermi liquid theory provides a quasiparticle description of the low-temperature behavior for a large class of unordered fermionic states of matter, including most normal metals, atomic nuclei, and liquid helium-3 [1]. Strongly interacting Fermi gases with highly imbalanced spin populations have been identified as belonging to the same class [2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14]. The quasiparticles in spin-imbalanced Fermi gases are Fermi polarons: spin impurities dressed by an excess cloud of majority fermions. The stability of quasiparticles in a Fermi liquid is a consequence of the restricted phase space for collisions due to Pauli blocking. With increasing temperature T , the accessible phase space increases, and the lifetime of quasiparticles shortens, leading to the breakdown of Fermi liquid theory. In this intermediate temperature regime the gas is neither a Fermi liquid nor a classical Boltzmann gas. For strong interactions, this regime is void of well-defined quasiparticles and controlled by the quantum critical point of the unitary, spin-balanced gas at zero chemical potential and temperature [15][16][17].Ultracold Fermi gases offer a unique opportunity to study the crossover from a low-temperature Fermi liquid to a classical Boltzmann gas, due to the large accessible temperature range. In spin-imbalanced Fermi gases, the two inequivalent Fermi surfaces provide additional richness. As the temperature is lowered from the classical regime, the Fermi surface of the majority forms first, giving minority spins the quasiparticle character of polarons. At even lower temperatures, the polarons themselves become quantum degenerate and form a Fermi surface.In this work, we access the entire crossover from degenerate polarons to the classical Boltzmann gas through the quantum critical region. The internal properties of the polaronic quasiparticles are measured via radio-frequency (rf) spectroscopy [10,[18][19][20] on a homogeneous Fermi gas [21,22]. At low temperatures, the...

We measure radio frequency (rf) spectra of the homogeneous unitary Fermi gas at temperatures ranging from the Boltzmann regime through quantum degeneracy and across the superfluid transition. For all temperatures, a single spectral peak is observed. Its position smoothly evolves from the bare atomic resonance in the Boltzmann regime to a frequency corresponding to nearly one Fermi energy at the lowest temperatures. At high temperatures, the peak width reflects the scattering rate of the atoms, while at low temperatures, the width is set by the size of fermion pairs. Above the superfluid transition, and approaching the quantum critical regime, the width increases linearly with temperature, indicating non-Fermi-liquid behavior. From the wings of the rf spectra, we obtain the contact, quantifying the strength of short-range pair correlations. We find that the contact rapidly increases as the gas is cooled below the superfluid transition.PACS numbers: 03.75. Ss, 05.30.Fk, 51.30.+i, 71.18.+y Understanding fermion pairing and pair correlations is of central relevance to strongly interacting Fermi systems such as nuclei [1,2], ultracold gases [3-6], liquid 3 He [7], high temperature superconductors [8], and neutron stars [9]. Strong interactions on the order of the Fermi energy challenge theoretical approaches, especially methods that predict dynamic properties such as transport or the spectral response at finite temperature [10]. Atomic Fermi gases at Feshbach resonances realize a paradigmatic system where the gas becomes as strongly interacting as allowed by unitarity [3][4][5][6]11]. Here, the system becomes universal, requiring only two energy scales: the Fermi energy E F and thermal energy k B T , where k B is the Boltzmann constant and T is the temperature. The corresponding length scales are the interparticle spacing λ F = n −1/3 and the thermal de Broglie wavelength λ T = h/ √ 2πmk B T , where m and n are the mass and number density of the atoms respectively. When the two energy scales are comparable, the system enters a quantum critical regime separating the high temperature Boltzmann gas from the fermionic superfluid [12]. Quantum criticality is often associated with the absence of quasiparticles [10,12,13], spurring a debate on the applicability of Fermi liquid theory to the degenerate normal fluid below the Fermi temperature [14][15][16]. It has been conjectured that preformed pairs exist above T c , up to a pairing temperature T * [3,5,11,[17][18][19][20][21].Radio frequency (rf) spectroscopy measures the momentum integrated, occupied spectral function, providing a powerful tool for studying interactions and correlations in Fermi gases [22][23][24][25][26][27]. Here, a particle is ejected from the interacting many-body state and transferred into a weakly interacting final state. Shifts in rf spectra indicate attractive or repulsive interactions in the gas. At high temperatures, the width of the rf spectrum reflects the scattering rate in the gas, while at low temperatures, the width has been used to infe...

Transport of strongly interacting fermions is crucial for the properties of modern materials, nuclear fission, the merging of neutron stars, and the expansion of the early Universe. Here, we observe a universal quantum limit of diffusivity in a homogeneous, strongly interacting atomic Fermi gas by studying sound propagation and its attenuation through the coupled transport of momentum and heat. In the normal state, the sound diffusivity D monotonically decreases upon lowering the temperature, in contrast to the diverging behavior of weakly interacting Fermi liquids. Below the superfluid transition temperature, D attains a universal value set by the ratio of Planck’s constant and the particle mass. Our findings inform theories of fermion transport, with relevance for hydrodynamic flow of electrons, neutrons, and quarks.

The equivalence between particles under rotation and charged particles in a magnetic field relates phenomena as diverse as spinning atomic nuclei, weather patterns, and the quantum Hall effect. For such systems, quantum mechanics dictates that translations along different directions do not commute, implying a Heisenberg uncertainty relation between spatial coordinates. We implement squeezing of this geometric quantum uncertainty, resulting in a rotating Bose-Einstein condensate occupying a single Landau gauge wave function. We resolve the extent of zero-point cyclotron orbits and demonstrate geometric squeezing of the orbits’ centers 7 decibels below the standard quantum limit. The condensate attains an angular momentum exceeding 1000 quanta per particle and an interatomic distance comparable to the cyclotron orbit. This offers an alternative route toward strongly correlated bosonic fluids.

At temperatures below freezing, lamellar phases of lipids in water separate into regions of ice in equilibrium with regions of lamellar phase with reduced water content. The repulsive force per unit area between lamellae is the negative of the pressure in the unfrozen, interlamellar water, which is determined by the chemical potential and thus by the temperature. When deuteriated water is used, the fraction remaining unfrozen is determined from its contribution to the nuclear magnetic resonance signal. When the molecular area in the plane of the lamellae and the density of water are known or may be inferred, the interlamellar separation may be calculated. We report the use of this technique to measure force-hydration and forcdistance curves at freezing temperatures for egg yolk lecithin.

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