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

Rapidly Rotating Fermi Gases

We show that the density profile of a Fermi gas in rapidly rotating potential will develop prominent features reflecting the underlying Landau level like energy spectrum. Depending on the aspect ratio of the trap, these features can be a sequence of ellipsoidal volumes or a sequence of quantized steps.Comment: 4 pages, 1 postscript fil

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

Boson induced s-wave pairing in dilute boson-fermion mixtures

We show that in dilute boson-fermion mixtures with fermions in two internal states, even when the bare fermion-fermion interaction is repulsive, the exchange of density fluctuations of the Bose condensate may lead to an effective fermion-fermion attraction, and thus to a Cooper instability in the s-wave channel. We give an analytical method to derive the associated $T_c$ in the limit where the phonon branch of the Bogoliubov excitation spectrum of the bosons is important. We find a $T_c$ of the same order as for a pure Fermi gas with bare attraction.Comment: 12 pages, no figure

Ideal Quantum Gases in D-dimensional Space and Power-law Potentials

We investigate ideal quantum gases in D-dimensional space and confined in a generic external potential by using the semiclassical approximation. In particular, we derive density of states, density profiles and critical temperatures for Fermions and Bosons trapped in isotropic power-law potentials. Form such results, one can easily obtain those of quantum gases in a rigid box and in a harmonic trap. Finally, we show that the Bose-Einstein condensation can set up in a confining power-law potential if and only if ${D/2}+{D/n}>1$, where $D$ is the space dimension and $n$ is the power-law exponent.Comment: 18 pages, Latex, to be published in Journal of Mathematical Physic

Two-species magneto-optical trap with 40K and 87Rb

We trap and cool a gas composed of 40K and 87Rb, using a two-species magneto-optical trap (MOT). This trap represents the first step towards cooling the Bose-Fermi mixture to quantum degeneracy. Laser light for the MOT is derived from laser diodes and amplified with a single high power semiconductor amplifier chip. The four-color laser system is described, and the single-species and two-species MOTs are characterized. Atom numbers of 1x10^7 40K and 2x10^9 87Rb are trapped in the two-species MOT. Observation of trap loss due to collisions between species is presented and future prospects for the experiment are discussed.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures; accepted for publication in Physical Review

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

Resonant control of elastic collisions in an optically trapped Fermi gas of atoms

We have loaded an ultracold gas of fermionic atoms into a far off resonance optical dipole trap and precisely controlled the spin composition of the trapped gas. We have measured a magnetic-field Feshbach resonance between atoms in the two lowest energy spin-states, |9/2, -9/2> and |9/2, -7/2>. The resonance peaks at a magnetic field of 201.5 plus or minus 1.4 G and has a width of 8.0 plus or minus 1.1 G. Using this resonance we have changed the elastic collision cross section in the gas by nearly 3 orders of magnitude.Comment: 4 pages, 3 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

Low energy collective excitations in a superfluid trapped Fermi gas

We study low energy collective excitations in a trapped superfluid Fermi gas, that describe slow variations of the phase of the superfluid order parameter. Well below the critical temperature the corresponding eigenfrequencies turn out to be of the order of the trap frequency, and these modes manifest themselves as the eigenmodes of the density fluctuations of the gas sample. The latter could provide an experimental evidence of the presence of the superfluid phase.Comment: 5 pages, REVTeX, referencies correcte