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APS » Journals » Phys. Rev. Lett. » Volume 93 » Issue 12
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Phys. Rev. Lett. 93, 120401 (2004) [4 pages]

Insulating Behavior of a Trapped Ideal Fermi Gas

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L. Pezzè1, L. Pitaevskii1,2, A. Smerzi1,3, and S. Stringari1
1Istituto Nazionale per la Fisica della Materia BEC-CRS and Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Trento, I-38050 Povo, Italy
2Kapitza Institute for Physical Problems, 117334 Moscow, Russia
3Theoretical Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545, USA

G. Modugno, E. de Mirandes, F. Ferlaino, H. Ott, G. Roati, and M. Inguscio
LENS and Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Firenze, and INFM, Via Nello Carrara 1, 50019 Sesto Fiorentino, Italy

Received 30 January 2004; published 13 September 2004

We investigate theoretically and experimentally the center-of-mass motion of an ideal Fermi gas in a combined periodic and harmonic potential. We find a crossover from a conducting to an insulating regime as the Fermi energy moves from the first Bloch band into the band gap of the lattice. The conducting regime is characterized by an oscillation of the cloud about the potential minimum, while in the insulating case the center of mass remains on one side of the potential.

© 2004 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.93.120401
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevLett.93.120401
PACS:
03.75.Ss, 03.75.Lm, 05.45.–a, 63.20.Pw
 
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