Degenerate fermion gas heating by hole creation.
Loss processes that remove particles from an atom trap leave holes behind in the single particle distribution if the trapped gas is a degenerate fermion system. The appearance of holes increases the temperature and we show that the heating (i) is significant if the initial temperature is well below the Fermi temperature T(F), and (ii) increases the temperature to T> or =T(F)/4 after half of the system's lifetime, regardless of the initial temperature. The hole heating has important consequences for the prospect of observing Cooper pairing in atom traps.
Timmermans
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Theoretical Division (T-4), Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545, USA.