Hannover 2013 – wissenschaftliches Programm

Bereiche | Tage | Auswahl | Suche | Aktualisierungen | Downloads | Hilfe

A: Fachverband Atomphysik

A 6: Ultra-cold atoms, ions and BEC II (with Q)

A 6.1: Vortrag

Montag, 18. März 2013, 14:00–14:15, F 428

Observing the Drop of Resistance in the Flow of a Superfluid Fermi Gas — •David Stadler, Sebastian Krinner, Jakob Meineke, Jean-Philippe Brantut, and Tilman Esslinger — Institute for Quantum Electronics, ETH Zurich

The ability of particles to flow with very low resistance is a distinctive character of a superfluid or superconducting state and led to its discovery in the last century. While the particle flow in liquid Helium or superconducting materials is essential to identify superfluidity or superconductivity, an analogous measurement has not been performed with superfluids based on ultracold Fermi gases. Here we report on the direct measurement of the conduction properties of strongly interacting fermions, and the observation of the celebrated drop of resistance associated with the onset of superfluidity. We observe variations of the atomic current over several orders of magnitude by varying the depth of the trapping potential in a narrow channel, which connects two atomic reservoirs. We relate the intrinsic conduction properties to thermodynamic functions in a model-independent way, making use of high-resolution in-situ imaging in combination with current measurements. Our results show that, similar to solid-state systems, current and resistance measurements in quantum gases are a sensitive probe to explore many-body physics. The presented method is closely analogous to the operation of a solid-state field-effect transistor. It can be applied as a probe for optical lattices and disordered systems, and paves the way towards the modeling of complex superconducting devices.