2002/12/31 by M. E. Gehm, Michael E. Gehm, S. L. Hemmer +4 · 9 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Atomic and Subatomic Physics Research #Atomic physics #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #Component (thermodynamics) #Condensed matter physics #Degenerate energy levels #Electron #Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope #Fermi energy #Fermi gas #Fermi resonance #Feshbach resonance #Instability #Molecule #Physics #Quantum #Quantum mechanics #Quantum, superfluid, helium dynamics #Spectral line #Stability (learning theory) #Unitarity #cond-mat.soft #cond-mat.supr-con
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physreva.68.011401
5 pages RevTeX4, 2 figures, 1 table. Submitted to Physical Review Letters
arxiv created 2003/03/03 · openalex publication_date 2003/07/02 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
A strongly attractive, two-component Fermi gas of atoms exhibits universal behavior and should be mechanically stable as a consequence of the quantum-mechanical requirement of unitarity. This requirement limits the maximum attractive force to a value smaller than that of the outward Fermi pressure. To experimentally demonstrate this stability, we use all-optical methods to produce a highly degenerate, two-component gas of 6Li atoms in an applied magnetic field near a Feshbach resonance, where strong interactions are observed. We find that gas is stable at densities far exceeding that predicted previously for the onset of mechanical instability. Further, we provide a temperature-corrected measurement of an important, universal, many-body parameter, which determines the stability---the mean-field contribution to the chemical potential in units of the local Fermi energy.