Probing ultracold Fermi atoms with a single ion

Y. Sherkunov, B. Muzykantskii, N. d’Ambrumenil, and B. D. Simons
Phys. Rev. A 79, 023604 – Published 4 February 2009

Abstract

We show that the recently proposed ionic microscope setup [Kollath et al., Phys. Rev. A 76, 063602 (2007)] could be adapted to measure the local single-particle energy distribution of a degenerate Fermi gas in situ with the resolution on the nanometer scale. We study an ion held in a Paul trap in an atomic Fermi gas and compute the two-photon Raman photo-association rate of the ion and an atom. We show that, as a function of the detunings between the frequencies of the two incident lasers and energies in the atom-ion system, the photoassociation rate directly measures the single-particle energy distribution in the Fermi gas around the ion. We describe an experiment to measure the photoassociation rate of a trapped ion and argue that, as the position of the ion can be scanned through the Fermi gas, this experiment directly probes the local energy and spin-state distribution of the Fermi gas.

  • Figure
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  • Received 10 March 2008

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.79.023604

©2009 American Physical Society

Authors & Affiliations

Y. Sherkunov, B. Muzykantskii, and N. d’Ambrumenil

  • Department of Physics, University of Warwick, Coventry, CV4 7AL, United Kingdom

B. D. Simons

  • Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, CB3 0HE, United Kingdom

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Issue

Vol. 79, Iss. 2 — February 2009

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