Exploring the Thermodynamics of a Universal Fermi Gas

Understand

From sand piles to electrons in metals, one of the greatest challenges in modern physics is to understand the behavior of an ensemble of strongly interacting particles.

• A class of quantum many-body systems such as neutron matter and cold Fermi gases share the same universal thermodynamic properties when interactions reach the maximum effective value allowed by quantum mechanics, the so-called unitary limit [1,2].
• It is then possible to simulate some astrophysical phenomena inside the highly controlled environment of an atomic physics laboratory.
• Previous work on the thermodynamics of a two-component Fermi gas led to thermodynamic quantities averaged over the trap [3-5], making it difficult to compare with many-body theories developed for uniform gases.