Related Experiment Video
Updated: Apr 25, 2026

Cooling an Optically Trapped Ultracold Fermi Gas by Periodical Driving
Published on: March 30, 2017
Dynamical arrest of ultracold lattice fermions
Bernd Schmidt1, M Reza Bakhtiari2, Irakli Titvinidze2
1Institut für Theoretische Physik, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt, 60438 Frankfurt/Main, Germany.
Abstract:
We theoretically investigate the thermodynamics of an interacting inhomogeneous two-component Fermi gas in an optical lattice. Motivated by a recent experiment by L. Hackermüller et al., Science 327, 1621 (2010), we study the effect of the interplay between thermodynamics and strong correlations on the size of the fermionic cloud. We use dynamical mean-field theory to compute the cloud size, which in the experiment shows an anomalous expansion behavior upon increasing attractive interaction. We confirm this qualitative effect but, assuming adiabaticity, we find quantitative agreement only for weak interactions. For strong interactions we observe significant nonequilibrium effects which we attribute to a dynamical arrest of the particles due to increasing correlations.
Related Concept Videos
Atomic Nuclei: Nuclear Relaxation Processes
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...
Atomic Nuclei: Types of Nuclear Relaxation
In spin–lattice or longitudinal relaxation, the excited spins exchange energy with the surrounding lattice as they return to the lower energy level. Among several mechanisms that contribute to spin–lattice relaxation, magnetic dipolar interactions are significant. Here, the excited nucleus transfers...
First Law: Particles in Two-dimensional Equilibrium
Newton's first law tells us about...
Trends in Lattice Energy: Ion Size and Charge
First Law: Particles in One-dimensional Equilibrium

