title: Diffraction of a superfluid fermi gas by an atomic grating.
abstract: An atomic grating generated by a pulsed standing-wave laser field is proposed to manipulate the superfluid state in a quantum degenerate gas of fermionic atoms. We show that in the presence of atomic Cooper pairs, the density oscillations of the gas caused by the atomic grating exhibit a much longer coherence time than that in the normal Fermi gas. Our result indicates that the technique of a pulsed atomic grating is a potential candidate to detect the atomic superfluid state in a quantum degenerate Fermi gas.
authors.affiliation: Optical Sciences Center, The University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona 85721, USA.
authors.forename: C P
authors.initials: CP
authors.lastname: Search
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Pu
authors.forename: W
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Meystre