Shining a blue detuned thin (2 μm) barrier we produce a double-well potential, which creates a Josephson-like junction for fermionic superfluids. By varying the interactions we investigate the population and phase dynamics between the two wells, observing the Josephson effect across the BEC-BCS crossover.

G. Valtolina et al.,
Josephson effect in fermionic superfluids across the BEC-BCS crossover
Science 350, 1505 (2015)

Light at 421nm will be employed for transverse cooling and for the Zeeman slower. Up to 1.2W of blue light is produced in a homemade frequency doubling cavity and is locked to the atomic line using saturated absorption spectroscopy in a hollow cathode lamp.

Light at 626nm will be employed for the magneto-optical trap (MOT). The red light is obtained from a commercial laser system and is locked to the atomic line using saturated absorption spectroscopy in a iodine cell.

Carlo Sias has been awarded with a SIR ("Scientific Independence of young Researchers") grant from MIUR ("Italian Ministry for Education and Research") for the development of the Ba⁺/Li experiment!

Using the inverse Abel transform, the in-situ 3D density profile of a cloud of two-state ⁶Li atoms trapped in a potential with cylindrical symmetry can be derived. Following [M. Ku et al., Science 335, 563 (2012)] we reconstruct the equation of state of the system. In particular, local pressure and compressibility have been obtained for the unitary Fermi gas, revealing the superfluid transition.

The quest to develop new and efficient experimental schemes to produce large and highly degenerate fermionic samples is fundamental in the way of using them to study fermionic superfluidity with a high degree of control on properties as interaction strength and dimensionality. ⁶Li samples of two spin components offers a broad Feshbach resonance allowing a good tenability of the interactions and the ability to investigate superfluidity across the BEC-BCS crossover. On the other way, standard laser cooling configurations are not efficient due to the lack of sub-Doppler cooling mechanism on the D2 line. We use a gray molasses operating on the D1 atomic transition to produce degenerate quantum gases of ⁶Li with a large number of atoms. This sub-Doppler cooling phase allows us to lower the initial temperature of 10⁹ atoms from 500 to 40 μK in 2 ms. We observe that D1 cooling remains effective into a high-intensity infrared dipole trap where two-state mixtures are evaporated to reach the degenerate regime. We produce molecular Bose-Einstein condensates of up to 5×10⁵ molecules and weakly interacting degenerate Fermi gases of 7×10⁵ atoms at T/T_F

A. Burchianti et al.
Efficient all-optical production of large ⁶Li quantum gases using D₁ gray-molasses cooling
Phys. Rev. A 90, 043408 (2014)