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Le Luo
Indiana University and Purdue University Indianapolis
"Superfluidity, Perfect Fluidity and Universal Thermodynamics in Strongly Interacting Fermi Gases"
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Friday February 08, 2013
3:30pm PHYS 203
Refreshments are served at 3:00 p.m. in Physics room 242.
http://physics.iupui.edu/people/le-luoStrongly interacting Fermi gases provide a paradigm to explore intriguing many-body physics which is universal in a wide range of exotic systems, including high-temperature superconductors, neutron stars, the quark-gluon plasma, and black holes. All those systems exhibit universal thermodynamics and hydrodynamics behavior governed by the unitary strong interactions. In such sense, laser-cooled and trapped Fermionic atoms are ideal quantum simulators for both condensed matter and nuclear physics. In this talk, I will review my experimental work including using all-optical method to produce strongly interacting Fermi gases, probing the universal thermodynamics in the unitary regime, obtaining experimental thermometry and measuring the critical temperature of Fermi condensation, and revealing quantum viscosity behavior in strongly interacting regime. I will present recent progress on searching of the perfect fluidity in strongly interacting Fermi gases. Unlike a superfluid, a perfect fluid is not in a single quantum state but a many-body quantum phenomenon which could connect to the prediction from string theory methods. The results from both thermodynamic and hydrodynamic measurements confirm that a strongly interacting Fermi gas enters into the perfect fluidity regime. The measured viscosity is very close to the estimation data from the quark-gluon plasma. I will also introduce ongoing projects of using trapped Fermi atoms for many-body physics of 2D systems and non-equilibrium dynamics.