Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jul 7, 2026

Cooling an Optically Trapped Ultracold Fermi Gas by Periodical Driving
Published on: March 30, 2017
Interaction-controlled transport of an ultracold fermi gas
Niels Strohmaier1, Yosuke Takasu, Kenneth Günter
1Institute for Quantum Electronics, ETH Zurich, 8093 Zurich, Switzerland.
Abstract:
We explore the transport properties of an interacting Fermi gas in a three-dimensional optical lattice. The center of mass dynamics of the atoms after a sudden displacement of the trap minimum is monitored for different interaction strengths and lattice fillings. With increasingly strong attractive interactions the weakly damped oscillation, observed for the noninteracting case, turns into a slow relaxational drift. Tuning the interaction strength during the evolution allows us to dynamically control the transport behavior. Strong attraction between the atoms leads to the formation of local pairs with a reduced tunneling rate. The interpretation in terms of pair formation is supported by a measurement of the number of doubly occupied lattice sites. This quantity also allows us to determine the temperature of the noninteracting gas in the lattice to be as low as (27+/-2)% of the Fermi temperature.
Related Concept Videos
Fermi Level Dynamics
Electron affinity in semiconductors refers to the energy gap between the minimum of its conduction band and the vacuum level and it is a critical parameter in determining how easily a semiconductor can accept additional electrons.
The work...
Carrier Transport
Drift Current:
The drift of charge carriers is started by an external electric field (E). Charged particles, such as electrons and holes, experience an acceleration between collisions with lattice atoms. For electrons, this results in a drift velocity (vd) given by:
Reynolds Transport Theorem
Directionality of Nuclear Transport
Carrier-Mediated Transport
Active transport involves two types of membrane-spanning transporters: uptake and efflux. Uptake transporters are expressed in the small...
Fermi Level
At absolute zero temperature, electrons fill all energy states up to the Fermi level, leaving upper states empty. As the temperature rises,...

