Strongly interacting bosons in a disordered optical lattice

Disorder, prevalent in nature, is intimately involved in such spectacular effects as the fractional quantum Hall effect and vortex pinning in type-II superconductors. Understanding the role of disorder is therefore of fundamental interest to materials research and condensed matter physics. Universal behavior, such as Anderson localization, in disordered non-interacting systems is well understood. But, the effects of disorder combined with strong interactions remains an outstanding challenge to theory. Here, we experimentally probe a paradigm for disordered, strongly-correlated bosonic systems-the disordered Bose-Hubbard (DBH) model-using a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) of ultra-cold atoms trapped in a completely characterized disordered optical lattice. We determine that disorder suppresses condensate fraction for superfluid (SF) or coexisting SF and Mott insulator (MI) phases by independently varying the disorder strength and the ratio of tunneling to interaction energy. In the future, these results can constrain theories of the DBH model and be extended to study disorder for strongly-correlated fermionic particles.Comment: 15 pages, 4 figures updated to correct errors in referencing previous wor

A dynamic pressure generator for checking complete pressure sensing systems installed on an airplane

A portable dynamic pressure generator, how it operates, and a test setup on an airplane are described. The generator is capable of providing a sinusoidal pressure having a peak-to-peak amplitude of 3.5 N/sq cm (5 psi) at frequencies ranging from 100 hertz to 200 hertz. A typical power spectral density plot of data from actual dynamic pressure fluctuation tests within the air inlet of the YF-12 airplane is presented

Spin Excitations in a Fermi Gas of Atoms

We have experimentally investigated a spin excitation in a quantum degenerate Fermi gas of atoms. In the hydrodynamic regime the damping time of the collective excitation is used to probe the quantum behavior of the gas. At temperatures below the Fermi temperature we measure up to a factor of 2 reduction in the excitation damping time. In addition we observe a strong excitation energy dependence for this quantum statistical effect.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

Limits to Sympathetic Evaporative Cooling of a Two-Component Fermi Gas

We find a limit cycle in a quasi-equilibrium model of evaporative cooling of a two-component fermion gas. The existence of such a limit cycle represents an obstruction to reaching the quantum ground state evaporatively. We show that evaporatively the \beta\mu ~ 1. We speculate that one may be able to cool an atomic fermi gas further by photoassociating dimers near the bottom of the fermi sea.Comment: Submitted to Phys. Rev

Collective Modes in a Dilute Bose-Fermi Mixture

We here study the collective excitations of a dilute spin-polarized Bose-Fermi mixture at zero temperature, considering in particular the features arising from the interaction between the two species. We show that a propagating zero-sound mode is possible for the fermions even when they do not interact among themselves.Comment: latex, 6 eps figure

Evaporative Cooling of a Two-Component Degenerate Fermi Gas

We derive a quantum theory of evaporative cooling for a degenerate Fermi gas with two constituents and show that the optimum cooling trajectory is influenced significantly by the quantum statistics of the particles. The cooling efficiency is reduced at low temperatures due to Pauli blocking of available final states in each binary collision event. We compare the theoretical optimum trajectory with experimental data on cooling a quantum degenerate cloud of potassium-40, and show that temperatures as low as 0.3 times the Fermi temperature can now be achieved.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figure

Transition from Collisionless to Hydrodynamic Behaviour in an Ultracold Atomic Gas

Relative motion in a two-component, trapped atomic gas provides a sensitive probe of interactions. By studying the lowest frequency excitations of a two spin-state gas confined in a magnetic trap, we have explored the transition from the collisionless to the hydrodynamic regime. As a function of collision rate, we observe frequency shifts as large as 6% as well as a dramatic, non-monotonic dependence of the damping rate. The measurements agree qualitatively with expectations for behavior in the collisionless and hydrodynamic limits and are quantitatively compared to a classical kinetic model.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

Pauli Blocking of Collisions in a Quantum Degenerate Atomic Fermi Gas

We have produced an interacting quantum degenerate Fermi gas of atoms composed of two spin-states of magnetically trapped $^{40}$K. The relative Fermi energies are adjusted by controlling the population in each spin-state. Measurements of the thermodynamics reveal the resulting imbalance in the mean energy per particle between the two species, which is as large as a factor of 1.4 at our lowest temperature. This imbalance of energy comes from a suppression of collisions between atoms in the gas due to the Pauli exclusion principle. Through measurements of the thermal relaxation rate we have directly observed this Pauli blocking as a factor of two reduction in the effective collision cross-section in the quantum degenerate regime.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figure