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Phys. Rev. Lett. 92, 150404 (2004) [4 pages]

Achieving a BCS Transition in an Atomic Fermi Gas

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L. D. Carr1,*, G. V. Shlyapnikov1,2,3,†, and Y. Castin1
1Laboratoire Kastler Brossel, Ecole Normale Supérieure, 24 rue Lhomond, 75231 Paris, France,
2FOM Institute for Atomic and Molecular Physics, Kruislaan 407, 1098 SJ Amsterdam, The Netherlands
3Russian Research Center, Kurchatov Institute, Kurchatov Square, 123182 Moscow, Russia

Received 15 August 2003; published 15 April 2004

We consider a gas of cold fermionic atoms having two spin components with interactions characterized by their s-wave scattering length a. At positive scattering length the atoms form weakly bound bosonic molecules which can be evaporatively cooled to undergo Bose-Einstein condensation, whereas at negative scattering length BCS pairing can take place. It is shown that, by adiabatically tuning the scattering length a from positive to negative values, one may transform the molecular Bose-Einstein condensate into a highly degenerate atomic Fermi gas, with the ratio of temperature to Fermi temperature T/TF∼10-2. The corresponding critical final value of kF|a|, which leads to the BCS transition, is found to be about one-half, where kF is the Fermi momentum.

© 2004 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.92.150404
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevLett.92.150404
PACS:
03.75.Ss, 05.30.Fk, 36.90.+f, 67.40.Db

*Present address: JILA, National Institute of Standards and Technology and Physics Department, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309-0440.

†Present address: Laboratoire de Physique Théorique et Modèles Statistiques, Université Paris Sud, Bâtiment 100, 91405 Orsay Cedex, France; and Van der Waals–Zeeman Institute, University of Amsterdam, Valckenierstraat 65/67, 1018 XE Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

 
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