Tuesday | May 2 | 4:00 p.m. | MIT room 26-214

Joseph Thywissen (University of Toronto)

Ultra-cold fermions on a chip

In the last few years, much of the attention of the ultra-cold atom community has shifted from bosons to fermions. Fermions promise a stronger connection between neutral gas and solid state experiments, where the "star of the show" is the electron. Despite this exciting prospect, fewer than one in five cold atoms labs around the world have started working with degenerate fermi gases (DFGs), because the technical barrier is high. We have recently demonstrated a simplified approach to DFGs, based on a microfabricated electromagnet and a single vapor cell. I will discuss our system's design, performance, and prospects, as well as evidence of the Ramsauer-Townsend effect in 87Rb-40K scattering.