News

Fri January 27, 2012

Monika Schleier-Smith wins the Hertz Thesis Prize and is selected as Finalist for the DAMOP Thesis Award

To recognize and encourage outstanding research in Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics by investigators who have held a Ph. D. for 10 years or less. The prize consists of $7,500 and a certificate citing the contributions made by the recipient. An allowance will be provided for travel expenses of the recipient to the Society meeting...
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Mon January 23, 2012

Viewpoint: Fermion Pairing in Flatland

Hongkun Park and Wolfgang Ketterle have been chosen as the 2016 class of National Security Science and Engineering Faculty Fellows,
Sun January 1, 2012

Compressibility of an ultracold Fermi gas with repulsive interactions

To study the effect of repulsive interactions on the equation of state of a Fermi we have measured the isothermal compressibility of the gas as a function of interaction strength [1].  The strength of repulsive interactions for 6Li atoms can be arbitrarily tuned by varying the magnetic field around a broad Feshbach resonance centered at...
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Sun January 1, 2012

Formation of Ultracold Fermionic NaLi Feshbach Molecules

We have produced NaLi Feshbach molecules from an ultracold mixture of bosonic 23Na and fermionic 6Li [1]. Precise magnetic field sweeps across a narrow Feshbach resonance convert 5% of free atoms into weakly bound molecules, corresponding to a molecule number of 5 × 104.   NaLi is only the second fermionic heteronuclear molecule produced at ultracold...
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Sun January 1, 2012

Ultracold Fermionic Feshbach Molecules of 23Na40K

We report on the formation of ultracold fermionic Feshbach molecules of $^{23}$Na$^{40}$K, the first fermionic molecule that is chemically stable in its ground state. The lifetime of the nearly degenerate molecular gas exceeds 100 ms in the vicinity of the Feshbach resonance. The measured dependence of the molecular binding energy on the magnetic field demonstrates...
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Sun January 1, 2012

Heavy Solitons in a Fermionic Superfluid

Topological excitations are found throughout nature, in proteins and DNA, as dislocations in crystals, as vortices and solitons in superfluids and superconductors, and generally in the wake of symmetry-breaking phase transitions. In fermionic systems, topological defects may provide bound states for fermions that often play a crucial role for the system’s transport properties. Famous examples...
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Sun January 1, 2012

Spin-Injection Spectroscopy of a Spin-Orbit Coupled Fermi Gas

The coupling of the spin of electrons to their motional state lies at the heart of recently discovered topological phases of matter. Here we create and detect spin-orbit coupling in an atomic Fermi gas, a highly controllable form of quantum degenerate matter. We reveal the spin-orbit gap via spin-injection spectroscopy, which characterizes the energy-momentum dispersion...
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Sun January 1, 2012

Quantum nonlinear optics with single photons enabled by strongly interacting atoms

We have realized a quantum nonlinear medium that transmits one, but absorbs two photons. This is accomplished by coupling slowly traveling photons in an atomic gas to highly excited, strongly interacting Rydberg states. This result opens not only possibilities for single-photon sources, but may also enable deterministic quantum gates between photons.
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