R. G. Herb Condensed Matter Seminars |
Events on Thursday, January 27th, 2011
- Shock waves in cold Fermi atoms
- Time: 10:00 am
- Place: 5310 Chamberlin
- Speaker: Alexander Abanov, Stony Brook University
- Abstract: I will discuss a recent experiment performed by James Joseph and John Thomas in Duke University. They experimentally produced a collision between two ultra-cold atomic clouds made out of a unitary Fermi gas. During the collision a very sharp and stable density peak at the center of the trap was formed and subsequently evolved into a box-like shape. We demonstrate that we can model the nonlinear dynamics of this collision using a dimensionally reduced quasi-1D form of hydrodynamic equations of motion. The quasi-1D nonlinear hydrodynamics shows near perfect agreement with the experiment and we see a clear evidence of shock wave formation which is a hallmark of nonlinear physics.
- Host: Andrey Chubukov