Insulating Behavior of a Trapped Ideal Fermi Gas

2004/01/30 by Luca Pezzè, L. Pezze', L. Pitaevskii +14
Physics and Astronomy · #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #Physics of Superconductivity and Magnetism #Quantum, superfluid, helium dynamics #cond-mat.other #cond-mat.soft

paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.93.120401

4 pages, 4 figures

arxiv created 2004/01/30 · openalex publication_date 2004/09/13 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

We investigate theoretically and experimentally the center-of-mass motion of an ideal Fermi gas in a combined periodic and harmonic potential. We find a crossover from a conducting to an insulating regime as the Fermi energy moves from the first Bloch band into the band gap of the lattice. The conducting regime is characterized by an oscillation of the cloud about the potential minimum, while in the insulating case the center of mass remains on one side of the potential.

Citations

• High-Temperature Superfluidity of Fermionic Atoms in Optical Lattices
• Observation of resonance condensation of fermionic atom pairs
• Production of a Fermi gas of atoms in an optical lattice
• Local Quantum Criticality in Confined Fermions on Optical Lattices
• Collective Excitations of a Degenerate Gas at the BEC-BCS Crossover
• Atomic Bose-Fermi Mixtures in an Optical Lattice
• Mixtures of bosonic and fermionic atoms in optical lattices
• Observation of Bose-Einstein Condensation of Molecules
• On the Quantum Correction For Thermodynamic Equilibrium
• Bose-Einstein condensates in 1D optical lattices