Measurement of the homogeneous contact of a unitary Fermi gas.
By selectively probing the center of a trapped gas, we measure the local, or homogeneous, contact of a unitary Fermi gas as a function of temperature. Tan's contact, C, is proportional to the derivative of the energy with respect to the interaction strength and is thus an essential thermodynamic quantity for a gas with short-range correlations. Theoretical predictions for the temperature dependence of C differ substantially, especially near the superfluid transition, T(c), where C is predicted to either sharply decrease, sharply increase, or change very little. For T/T(F)>0.4, our measurements of the homogeneous gas contact show a gradual decrease of C with increasing temperature, as predicted by theory. We observe a sharp decrease in C at T/T(F)=0.16, which may be due to the superfluid phase transition. While a sharp decrease in C below T(c) is predicted by some many-body theories, we find that none of the predictions fully account for the data.
JILA, National Institute of Standards and Technology and University of Colorado, Department of Physics, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado 80309-0440, USA.
Yoav
Y
Sagi
Tara E
TE
Drake
Rabin
R
Paudel
Deborah S
DS
Jin