Hannover 2013 – scientific programme

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A: Fachverband Atomphysik

A 29: Poster: Ultra-cold atoms, ions and BEC (with Q)

A 29.23: Poster

Wednesday, March 20, 2013, 16:00–18:30, Empore Lichthof

An Ultracold Fermi Gas in an Optical Lattice — •Puneet Murthy, Mathias Neidig, Martin Ries, Andre Wenz, Thomas Lompe, and Selim Jochim — Physikalisches Institut, Universität Heidelberg, Heidelberg

Ultracold Fermi gases confined in optical lattices hold great promise in understanding interesting many-body phenomenon. Recent studies have demonstrated single site resolution in a system of bosonic quantum gases. Our objective is to employ similar techniques in the study of an ultracold quantum degenerate Fermi gas of ⁶Li atoms. This poster presents our recent experimental progress towards attaining such a system.

At present we are able to transfer a quantum degenerate two component gas of ⁶Li atoms from an optical dipole trap into a stack of several ’pancake’-shaped potentials, which are formed by the interference pattern of two off-resonant laser beams. We use a radio-frequency tomographic method to probe the occupation of individual pancakes and find that we can load atoms into less than five pancakes. In the next step, we aim to transfer the atoms into a single pancake potential. By having additional lattice beams creating standing waves in the perpendicular direction, we will be able to produce a two-dimensional optical lattice containing an ultracold degenerate Fermi gas, and perform in-situ studies on it.