Fluctuations in Quantum
Degenerate Fermi Gases

Fluctuations in Quantum Degenerate Fermi Gases
byChristian Sanner

Abstract
Ultracold neutral Fermi gases provide a novel platform for the experimental quantum
simulation of correlated many-body systems. The study of ﬂuctuations and correlations in Fermi gases and the development of appropriate measurement methods are
the subject of this thesis.
Spatial atom noise analysis performed for expanded clouds of an ideal Fermi gas
reveals Pauli suppression of density ﬂuctuations for cold gas samples deep in thequantum degenerate regime. Measuring the level of suppression provides sensitive
thermometry at low temperatures.
Spin ﬂuctuations and density ﬂuctuations are studied for a two-component gasof strongly interacting fermions along the Bose-Einstein condensate - BCS crossover.
This is done by in situ imaging of dispersive speckle patterns. Compressibility andmagnetic susceptibility are determined from the measured ﬂuctuations. Speckle imaging easily resolves a tenfold suppression of spin ﬂuctuations below shot noise, and canbe universally applied to trapped quantum gases.
A degenerate Fermi gas is rapidly quenched into the regime of strong eﬀective repulsion near a Feshbach resonance. The spin ﬂuctuations are monitored using speckle
imaging and, contrary to several theoretical predictions, the samples remain in theparamagnetic phase for an arbitrarily large scattering length. Over a wide range ofinteraction strengths a rapid decay into bound pairs is observed over times on theorder of a few Fermi times, preventing the study of equilibrium phases of strongly
repulsive fermions. This suggests that a Fermi gas with strong short-range repulsive
interactions does not undergo a ferromagnetic phase transition.

December 2012

Acknowledgments
Having too much stress in your life? Go visit the zoo! Building 26 ﬂoor 2 is a zoo. It
is a marvelous zoo, a microcosm of scientiﬁc leisure almost completely shielded fromall annoyances that normally constrain life. Being one of the shy animals I am very
thankful to the zookeeper for letting me hide from visitors, cookie hours, daylight,
seminars and other forms of harsh reality. I am thankful to Wolfgang for a lot ofother things.
MIT is a research institute and not a Zen eldorado, but most of the time it felt
like it anyway. This is because of the patience and humility of many people that
I had the privilege to work with over the years. Many thanks to all my wonderfulcolleagues, among them in particular Jit Kee Chin, Dan Miller, Marko Cetina, Yingmei Liu, Widagdo Setiawan, Aviv Keshet, Edward Su, Ralf Gommers, Yong-il Shin,
Wujie Huang and Jonathon Gillen. Thank you also for mostly sharing a passion for
terminated photodiodes!
Special thanks to Markus Oberthaler and Selim Jochim.
Finally I am thankful to Conrad Fischer, Larry Hagman, Friedrich Küppersbusch,
Paul Pranzo, Saint Bruno of Cologne, Louise Clancy, Jerry Shine, Yuri Gagarin,
Mother Teresa, Heiner Müller, Heinz Heimsoeth, Richard Slotkin, Justin Pierce,
Princess Leia and Luke Skywalker for providing insight beyond imagination. Ahoy!

Contents
1 Introduction
1.1

1.2

7

Mean values and ﬂuctuations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

8

1.1.1

Why is the physics of ﬂuctuations interesting? . . . . . . . . .

8Fluctuations and experiments with cold atoms . . . . . . . . . . . . .

9

1.2.1

New ways to probe interesting quantum phases . . . . . . . .

9

1.2.2

Noise and correlation measurements - The state of the ﬁeld . .

10

1.2.3

A universal approach to noise measurements - Synopsis andoutline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

2 Theory of ﬂuctuations in Fermi gases

11
14

2.1

The ﬂuctuation-response relation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

14

2.2

Bosons vs. Fermions - Diﬀerent noise properties . . . . . . . . . . . .

17

2.3

Density ﬂuctuations in a non-interacting Fermi gas . . . . . . . . . .

18

2.3.1

Large probe volume limit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

18

2.3.2

Small probe volume limit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

20

2.4

Fluctuations in an interacting Fermi gas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

23

2.5

Density ﬂuctuations and light scattering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

25

3 Measuring ﬂuctuations in an ideal Fermi gas

27

3.1

Measurements in trap and after ballistic expansion . . . . . . . . . .

28

3.2

The experimental procedure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

30

3.2.1

Fermi gas apparatus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

30

3.2.2

Sample preparation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

31

4

3.3

3.4

How to count atoms in a box - Experimental challenges and constraints 33
3.3.1

Diﬀerent imaging methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

33

3.3.2

Atom noise and other noise sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

35

3.3.3

Nonlinear eﬀects and other limitations . . . . . . . . . . . . .

42

The imaging system for noise measurements . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

46

3.4.1

Overview of the imaging system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

47

3.4.2

Detector optimization for noise measurements . . . . . . . . .

50

3.4.3

Further improvement strategies - Coherent vs. incoherent illumination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

56

Depth of ﬁeld considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

60

Data acquisition and analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

61

3.5.1

Horizontal statistics vs. vertical stack analysis . . . . . . . . .

62

3.5.2

The vertical noise measurement procedure . . . . . . . . . . .

64

3.5.3

Scattering cross section calibration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

66

Measurement results and interpretation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

68

3.6.1

Comparison of theory and experiment . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

68

3.6.2

Atom counting contrast saturation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

70

3.6.3

Noise in the noise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

71

3.4.4
3.5

3.6

4 Measuring ﬂuctuations in a strongly interacting Fermi gas
4.1

4.2

4.3

73

Properties of an interacting two component Fermi gas . . . . . . . . .

74

4.1.1

From elastic collisions to Feshbach resonances . . . . . . . . .

74

4.1.2

A Fermi gas in the unitary limit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

75

In-situ noise measurements - Advantages and challenges . . . . . . . .

79

4.2.1

A short review of Fourier optics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

80

4.2.2

Dispersive imaging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

81

4.2.3

Initial experimental strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

84

From laser speckle to speckle imaging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

86

4.3.1

Laser speckle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

86

4.3.2

Out-of-focus speckle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

87

4.4

4.5

Data acquisition and analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

89

4.4.1

Experimental setup and sample preparation . . . . . . . . . .

89

4.4.2

Noise extraction and mapping procedure . . . . . . . . . . . .

90

4.4.3

Determination of the superﬂuid to normal phase boundary . .

94

Results and interpretation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

95

5 Exploring correlations in a repulsively interacting Fermi gas
5.1

98

Ferromagnetic instability of a repulsive Fermi gas . . . . . . . . . . .

98

5.1.1

The critical interaction strength . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100

5.1.2

Pairing instability vs. ferromagnetic instability . . . . . . . . . 101

5.2

Experimental strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102

5.3

Experimental results - Discussion and interpretation . . . . . . . . . . 104

5.4

5.3.1

Spin ﬂuctuation measurements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104

5.3.2

Pair formation measurements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105

5.3.3

Rate comparison . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107

5.3.4

Temperature considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108

5.3.5

Kinetic energy and release energy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109

5.3.6Time scales for domain growth vs. experimental resolution . . 112

Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113

6 Conclusions and outlook

115

A Suppression of Density Fluctuations in a Quantum Degenerate Fermi
Gas

117

B Speckle Imaging of Spin Fluctuations in a Strongly Interacting Fermi
Gas

122

C Correlations and Pair Formation in a Repulsively Interacting Fermi
Gas

127

Chapter 1
Introduction
The ﬁeld of ultracold quantum gases continues to expand. Bose-Einstein condensationof dilute alkali vapors [1, 2] opened up a multitude of research possibilities and led
eventually to the experimental study of quantum degenerate Fermi gases [3] andnew phases in optical lattices [4]. Particularly in this context it is evident that the
expansion of the ﬁeld is not mere diversiﬁcation. Instead, cold quantum gases are
becoming a model system to investigate universal physics [5] and to address longstanding questions relevant for solid state many-body systems [6].
The experiments described in this thesis follow this concept. Individually they
demonstrate fundamental eﬀects of quantum mechanics, reveal pair correlations in
a superﬂuid and attempt to investigate the possibilities for itinerant ferromagnetismin a strongly interacting quantum gas. However, altogether they want to contributetowards the implementation of a quantum simulator for solid state systems.
This chapter will provide a motivation and general introduction to ﬂuctuation andcorrelation experiments with cold atoms.

7

1.1

Mean values and ﬂuctuations

1.1.1

Why is the physics of ﬂuctuations interesting?

Every experimentalist is confronted with ﬂuctuations in the quantity of interest. Often these ﬂuctuations have a technical origin, e.g. uncertainties caused by residual
mechanical vibrations in a measurement setup, and contribute to the error budget ofthe experiment. In the absence of technical noise the outcome of a measurement istypically still noisy, but now the noise reﬂects fundamental properties of the studied
system.
Measuring the voltage drop across an electrical resistor is a good example. Initially technical noise in the measurement device - for instance an oscilloscope - might
be the limiting factor, but eventually one ﬁnds that irreducible forms of noise areassociated with every resistor. The random thermal motion of the charge carriers in
the conductor gives rise to thermal Johnson noise, and for very low currents throughthe resistor the quantization of charge results in signiﬁcant shot noise type statisticalﬂuctuations of the current [7].
However, identifying the physical origins of a noise eﬀect is not only insightful on
the level of a particular system. It rather leads to the understanding of a very fundamental relation between the ﬂuctuations in any thermodynamic system at equilibrium
and the response of the system to applied external forces. This relation, explicatedas the ﬂuctuation-dissipation theorem [8], allows one vice versa to determine relevant thermodynamic quantities without aﬀecting the equilibrium: One can interpret
ﬂuctuations as being caused by spontaneous inﬁnitesimal perturbations constantly
probing the response of the system. Fluctuations are not just a distraction from themean values, they carry additional information.
From a historical viewpoint the discovery and explanation of Brownian motion[9] is another very prominent example for the relevance and impact of understanding
noise eﬀects in physics. Like the thermal noise in a resistor Brownian motion canbe analyzed and interpreted within the framework of the ﬂuctuation-dissipation theorem. Again the system’s response to an applied force is linked to thermally driven
8

microscopic ﬂuctuations. Many years before a general formulation of the ﬂuctuationdissipation theorem was given, Einstein [10] and Smoluchowski [11] carefully modeled Brown’s experimental observations. They derived via statistical mechanics theconnection between the kinetic noise of erratically moving microscopic particles characterized by the diﬀusion constant D = (Δx)2 /(2t), i.e. mean square displacement
per time t, and a mobility parameter μ = vd /F that quantiﬁes the particles’ mean
drift velocity vd under the inﬂuence of an externally applied force F . By ﬁnding

D = μkB T(1.1)

with kB being the Boltzmann constant and T being the absolute temperature, Einstein and Smoluchowski wrote down an early version of the ﬂuctuation-dissipation
theorem.
Many more examples - in particular exciting recent developments like squeezed
quantum states [12] - could be given to further motivate the exploitation of noise
phenomena, but in the focus of this thesis is the application of noise measurementsin the context of many-body physics with ultracold quantum gases.

1.2

Fluctuations and experiments with cold atoms

1.2.1

New ways to probe interesting quantum phases

Given the universal relevance of ﬂuctuations it is not surprising that they can also
play an important role in the ﬁeld of cold atoms. Consider for instance a threedimensional optical lattice loaded with a two-component interacting Fermi gas sothat there is on average one atom per lattice site. Assuming appropriate values fortemperature, lattice depth and interaction strength it is expected that such a system
undergoes a phase transition to a Mott insulating [13] and an antiferromagnetic [14]state as depicted in Fig. 1-1. Diagnosing these phase transitions can be challenging
because the mean density distribution of one atom per lattice site (i.e. half ﬁlling in a9a) Mott Insulatorb) Antiferromagnet

Figure 1-1: Illustration of atom distributions in an optical lattice for a) a Mott
insulating state and b) an antiferromagnetic state. The red and gray dots represent
atoms of the two diﬀerent spin components. Both quantum states have exactly one
atom per lattice site. While the Mott insulator randomly assigns the spin state foreach site, the antiferromagnet is an ordered system alternating between the two spincomponents.

system with two spin components) is not changing. However, by measuring diﬀerential
density ﬂuctuations the various states can easily be distinguished. With n1 (n2 ) being
the number density of spin component 1 (2) it is clear that both quantum phases
exhibit suppressed noise for the sum density n1 + n2 . But while the Mott insulator
will show ﬂuctuations in the diﬀerence density n1 − n2 , they will be suppressed forthe antiferromagnet.
Although noise measurements are not the only method to experimentally identify
these quantum phases, developing the ability to precisely measure ﬂuctuations isgoing to be a signiﬁcant advantage at the ultracold atoms research frontier.

1.2.2

Noise and correlation measurements - The state of the
ﬁeldOver the past decade progress has been made towards accessing the wealth of information hidden in the density ﬂuctuations and correlations of ultracold gases. Several
experiments successfully demonstrated the deterministic sub-Poissonian preparationof small clouds of bosons with typically a few hundred atoms [15, 16, 17, 18].
In 2004 Altman et al. [19] suggested to directly reveal density-density correlations by carefully analyzing the atom shot noise in the image of an expanding gas
cloud. Their proposal led to experiments that reported the atom shot noise resolved
detection of local and nonlocal pair correlations between the constituents of dissociated weakly bound Feshbach molecules [20]. Furthermore, following similar concepts
10Fölling et al. [21] and Rom et al. [22] could ﬁnd density correlations in images ofgas clouds released out of an optical lattice potential. The obtained correlations in
momentum space are a consequence of the momentum projection happening when the
periodic lattice potential is abruptly switched oﬀ. Accordingly, after ballistic expansion the correlations are revealed in the spatial frequency domain by calculating thetwo-dimensional autocorrelation functions of the density distributions and averaging
appropriately.
In a more recent experiment [23] studying a two-dimensional Mott-insulator ofbosonic Caesium atoms it was possible to directly observe in a spatially resolved
way the reduction of number ﬂuctuations accompanying the incompressible Mott
state. A localized atom counting in repeated absorption images was performed toobtain the number statistics. In this regard this experiment was paradigmatic for a
new generation of cold atoms experiments that can now provide single-site resolved
imaging of atoms in optical lattices allowing high ﬁdelity atom counting and statistics[24].
All approaches mentioned here delivered insight into interesting quantum statesby employing noise or ﬂuctuation related measurements. However, they all rely insome way on specialized preparation schemes, two-dimensional conﬁnement geometries or other requirements. The work presented in this thesis wants to further expand
the applicability of noise measurements by introducing and demonstrating a simple
experimental infrastructure for universal ﬂuctuation measurements in ultracold atoms
systems.

1.2.3

A universal approach to noise measurements - Synopsis
and outline

Measurements of an observable A in a system at thermal equilibrium ﬂuctuate aroundtheir expectation value A. These ﬂuctuations ΔA are a fundamental property ofthe system and can be linked via the ﬂuctuation-dissipation theorem to corresponding thermodynamic susceptibilities. Applying a small external force to a system and11

observing its response in the conjugate quantity is equivalent to measuring the ﬂuctuations of the system at equilibrium. Assuming that A stands for the volume-integralof a density one ﬁnds that for large macroscopic subsystems of volume V the relative√ﬂuctuations ΔA/A are usually proportional to V /V and therefore negligibly smalland hidden in the experimental noise ﬂoor.
This also applies to typical experiments in the ﬁeld of cold atoms. When analyzing the density distribution in clouds of cold gases the thermodynamic limit isassumed and relevant quantities are derived from spatially resolved measurementsof A. However, recently several experiments have demonstrated that ﬂuctuations
and more generally correlations are experimentally directly accessible. In particular for neutral fermions observations of pair-correlations [20], Hanbury Brown andTwiss-type anti-correlations [21] and local antibunching [22] in the noise have beenreported.
This thesis introduces a universal experimental strategy to measure ﬂuctuations
in ultracold gases and demonstrates several applications. First, a theoretical overview
about ﬂuctuations in Fermi gases is given in the next chapter. A brief discussion of
the ﬂuctuation-dissipation theorem and a comparison between bosonic and fermionicsystems is followed by a derivation of density ﬂuctuations for non-interacting fermions.
Subsequently the eﬀects of interactions and the relation between density ﬂuctuations
and light scattering properties are discussed.
The third chapter focuses on the experimental demonstration of Pauli suppression of density ﬂuctuations in a quantum degenerate ideal Fermi gas of 6 Li atoms.
This well-understood ideal gas makes it possible to directly observe the dramatic
unobstructed consequences of Fermi statistics at low temperature and it serves atthe same time as a clean test system for the noise measurements performed on an
expanded gas cloud. A detailed account of the experimental methods is provided andthe measurement results are quantitatively analyzed.
Chapter four presents a modiﬁed and extended version of the ﬂuctuation measurements called speckle imaging, adapted to trapped samples of interacting gases andallowing balanced detection in a two-component mixture, i.e. accessing Δ(n1 − n2 )12directly without measuring the densities n1 and n2 of the two components individually. The underlying principles of this new method, in particular aspects of dispersive
imaging and the role of laser speckle, are discussed extensively. Speckle imaging isapplied to a strongly interacting Fermi gas in the BEC-BCS crossover and resulting
measurements of spin Δ(n1 − n2 ) and density ﬂuctuations Δ(n1 + n2 ) are reported.
By means of the ﬂuctuation-dissipation theorem these quantities are mapped to themagnetic susceptibility and the compressibility of the gas. A short review of Landau’s
Fermi liquid theory contributes to a further interpretation of the results.
As another application of speckle imaging chapter ﬁve reports on the measurementof correlations and pair formation in a repulsively interacting Fermi gas. Starting froma previous publication [25] that had found evidence for itinerant ferromagnetism ina Fermi gas with repulsive interactions but could not determine the size of the ferromagnetic domains, speckle imaging was utilized to clarify the previous measurements
and look for domain growth. After an introduction to the concept of itinerant ferromagnetism and a discussion about the special features of a metastable Fermi gas
with repulsive interactions, the connection between domain size and spin noise enhancement is exempliﬁed and the experimental constraints are described, particularly
emphasizing the fast switching of interaction strengths. Given the surprising resultthat no signiﬁcant domain growth was found, a detailed discussion of the competition
between domain formation and pairing instability follows.
Finally conclusions and an outlook for future noise experiments are presented.
Three appendices containing printouts of relevant publications conclude the thesis.

13

Chapter 2Theory of ﬂuctuations in Fermi
gases
2.1

The ﬂuctuation-response relation

In view of its universal character it is appropriate to begin the theoretical overview
of ﬂuctuations in Fermi gases with a short review of the ﬂuctuation-dissipation theorem. Rather than discussing it in a more general form assuming frequency-dependent
dynamic susceptibilities, its static precursor, the ﬂuctuation-response relation, is introduced emphasizing the aspects particularly relevant for the purpose of this thesis.
A general derivation at full length can be found in [26].
Consider a thermodynamic system with Hamiltonian H and an external force fwith corresponding conjugate operator Â and [Â, H] = 0. Examples for such forces area magnetic ﬁeld or a tension, corresponding to magnetic moment or length operators
for Â. The density matrix of such a system can be written asρ=e−β(H−f Â)= e−β(H−f Â−K)−β(H−f
Â)
Tr e

(2.1)

with the generalized potential K deﬁned via eβK = 1/Tr e−β(H−f Â) = 1/Z and
β = 1/kB T , where Z denotes the partition function, kB the Boltzmann constant and14

T the absolute temperature. Under the inﬂuence of the external force the value of avariable B is then calculated as
B = B̂ = Tr [ρB̂] = Tr [B̂ e−β(H−f Â) eβK ] .

(2.2)

The diﬀerential change of B with f is therefore

∂ eβK
∂B
∂K
= β Tr [B̂ Âρ] +Tr [B̂ e−β(H−f Â) ] = β Tr [B̂ Âρ] + β
Tr [B̂ρ] , (2.3)
∂f
∂f
∂f

which turns with∂K
1 ∂ ln Z
1=−=−
β Tr [Â e−β(H−f Â) ] = −Tr [Âρ] = −Â
∂f
β ∂f
βZ

(2.4)

1
1
∂B
=
[B̂ Â − B̂Â] =B̂ ÂC .
∂f
kB T
kB T

(2.5)

into

The last equation - often called ﬂuctuation-response theorem - relates in a thermodynamic system the correlation B̂ ÂC to the diﬀerential susceptibility χ = ∂B/∂fthat characterizes the system’s response to the external force.
Assuming that the operators represent extensive quantities of order O(N 1 ), e.g.
the particle number N itself, and the derivative is taken with respect to an intensive
quantity of order O(N 0 ), e.g. the chemical potential μ, one typically expects correlations of order O(N 1 ). In other words, for macroscopic systems with microscopic
interactions density-density correlations are expected to be of order O(N 1 ) and therefore ΔN = O(N 1/2 ). Systems undergoing a phase transition or developing long-rangeorder by other means can exhibit very diﬀerent behaviors [27, 28].
15

To continue with the above example suppose Â = B̂ = N̂ in an open system,
where N is the number of particles. As mentioned the grand-canonical ensemble
identiﬁes the corresponding force as the chemical potential μ and (2.5) reads
1∂N1=
N̂ 2 C =
(ΔN )2 .
∂μ
kB T
kB T

(2.6)

Employing the Maxwell relations shows ∂N/∂μ = V n ∂n/∂p = κT N 2 /V with volume
V , density n = N/V , pressure p and isothermal compressibility κT , leading to
1 (ΔN )2
= κT .
nkB T N

(2.7)

Equation (2.7) represents a well-known result from the grand-canonical ensemble,
connecting the relative number ﬂuctuations (ΔN )2 /N with the corresponding susceptibility, i.e. the isothermal compressibility κT . This makes it possible to determine the compressibility by measuring the ﬂuctuations. For a classical ideal gas theﬂuctuations are directly obtained from1

2(ΔN ) =

d r1 d r2  ρ(r1 ) ρ(r2 ) C = V33d3 r  ρ(r) ρ(0) C = V n ,(2.8)

which recovers together with (2.6) the ideal gas law pV = N kB T .
1

For a homogeneous system  ρ(r1 ) ρ(r2 ) C only depends on the relative distance r = r1 − r2 .
Furthermore, for the ideal gas the conditional probability to ﬁnd an atom at r given that there is anatom at the origin is δ(r)+n. Therefore ρ(r) ρ(0) = n (δ(r)+n), where ρ(r) denotes the probability
to ﬁnd an atom at position r. For more details about the explicit calculation of correlations confer[29, 30].

16

2.2

Bosons vs. Fermions - Diﬀerent noise properties

Despite focusing on Fermi gases, it is often insightful to compare the diﬀerent consequences of Bose and Fermi statistics. Along the lines of the previous paragraphthe ﬂuctuations for an ideal quantum gas can be obtained by diﬀerentiating thecorresponding thermodynamic potentials. More explicitly, keeping the notation andassuming Â = B̂, equations (2.4) and (2.5) lead to
−

∂2K
1
∂Â
=
Â2 C
=
∂f 2
∂f
kB T

(2.9)

with the potential K = −kB T ln Z. In the framework of the occupation number
formalism, the partition function Z of an ideal quantum gas is given byln Z =∞1ln[1 + a e−β(k −μ) ] .
a k=1(2.10)

Here k is indexing the single-particle states with eigenenergies k and the constanta speciﬁes the particular distribution, i.e. a = 1 for the Fermi-Dirac distribution,a = −1 for the Bose-Einstein distribution and a = 0 (interpreted as lima→0 ) for theclassical Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution.
By identifying f with the energy k and the corresponding Â with the occupation
number operator −n̂k , equation (2.9) can be applied to these distributions yielding
for the occupation number ﬂuctuations

σn2 k = n̂2k  − n̂k 2 = −kB T

∂ 2K
∂Â
∂
= −kB T
= kB Tn̂k  .
2
∂f
∂f
∂k

Together with the well-known expectation values for the occupation numbers

17(2.11)

n̂k  = nk =1eβ(k −μ) + a,(2.12)

equation (2.11) results in

σn2 k =eβ(k −μ)= n̂k  − a n̂k 2 ,[eβ(k −μ) + a]2(2.13)

i.e. compared to a classical Maxwell-Boltzmann gas (a = 0) the ﬂuctuations areenhanced for a Bose gas (a = −1) and suppressed for a Fermi gas (a = 1).
By examining an individual single-particle state k, the last result becomes very
intuitive for Fermions: The probability p to ﬁnd the state occupied with exactly one
Fermion is p = n̂k , no Fermion is found with probability 1 − p. This binomial
distribution has obviously a variance σ 2 = p (1 − p), in agreement with equation(2.13). For small probabilities, i.e. high temperatures eβμ  1, one ﬁnds σ 2 ≈ n̂k ,
resembling the classical result.
So far this introduction to noise properties focused on occupation number ﬂuctuations, but a typical in situ experiment would rather measure density ﬂuctuations.
In the language of the discussion above one has to integrate the binomial variancen̂k (1 − n̂k ) over all momentum states k in the local Fermi sea.

2.3

Density ﬂuctuations in a non-interacting Fermi
gas

2.3.1

Large probe volume limit

Following the above proposal the number variance in a large2 subvolume V of ahomogeneous non-interacting Fermi gas is2large compared to the inverse momentum width of the Fermi surface, i.e. δk V 1/3  1 with δkdeﬁned via h̄2 kF δk/m = kB T and Fermi wave vector kF

18

2
σN
=



nk (1 − nk ) ≈

k

V  3
d k nk (1 − nk )(2π)3(2.14)and the integral can be evaluated by substituting k = h̄k 2 /(2m). This leads to
2
σN
=


2πV
3/2
(2m)
1/2 d nk (1 − nk )h3

(2.15)

with particle mass m and Planck’s constant h.
To obtain the same result one can alternatively start from equation (2.6) andstraightforwardly calculate ∂N/∂μ in the grand-canonical ensemble. N as a functionof temperature, volume and fugacity z = eβμ is readily given by

N=


k

nk  ≈

 ∞
2πV
1/2
3/2
(2m)
d
h3
z −1 eβ + 1
0(2.16)and to streamline subsequent calculations it is useful to rewrite the last equation as

N = V /λ3 f3/2 (z)(2.17)√
with the thermal wavelength λ = h/ 2πmkB T and the integral expression
fn (z) = −Lin (−z) =

1 ∞
xn−1
,
dx −1 xΓ(n) 0z e +1(2.18)

where Lin stands for the polylogarithm and Γ denotes the gamma function3 . From aseries expansion of fn (z) one can verify the recursion relation ∂fn (z)/∂z = fn−1 (z)/zand therefore equation (2.6) evaluates to
3

The polylogarithm is implemented in Mathematica as Lin (t) = PolyLog[n, t] and the gammafunction as Γ(t) = Gamma[t].

19Var(N)/N

1
0.8
0.6
0.4
5

10

15

20

25

30

fugacity

Figure 2-1: Suppression of density ﬂuctuations in a quantum degenerate ideal Fermi
gas. The relative ﬂuctuations (ΔN )2 /N = f1/2 (z)/f3/2 (z) are shown as a functionof the fugacity z = eβμ . For non-degenerate temperatures with z → 0 one retrievesclassical Poissonian statistics (ΔN )2 = N .

2
σN
=

1 ∂N
βz
= V /λ3 f1/2 (z) .
β∂z(2.19)

2/N versus the fugacity z.
Fig. 2-1 illustrates this result by plotting the ratio σN

Following equation (2.7) the calculated density ﬂuctuations of the ideal Fermi gas
correspond to an isothermal compressibility κT = (nkB T )−1 f1/2 (z)/f3/2 (z). At temperatures low compared to the Fermi temperature TF = F /kB this compressibility
becomes κ = 3/(2nF ) to ﬁrst order in T /TF . Vice versa the relative ﬂuctuations
then scale linearly like2
σN
3 kB T=N
2 F

for T → 0 .

(2.20)

In contrast, the classical ideal gas with its compressibility κT = 1/(nkB T ) as obtained
2from equation (2.8) always maintains σN/N = 1.

2.3.2

Small probe volume limit

In the foregoing discussion it was assumed that the volume V = 4/3 πR3 was suﬃ2
ciently large such that probe volume surface eﬀects would be negligible and σN∝ R3 .

However, for δk R  1 (with δk as deﬁned in the previous section) zero tempera20

2ture quantum ﬂuctuations following the law σN∝ R2 ln R for R → ∞ become thedominant noise source.
2
in analogy to (2.8) for a polarized zero temperature non-interacting
To calculate σN

Fermi gas one has to evaluate the density-density static correlation function
C(r) = ρ(r1 ) ρ(r2 )C with r = r1 − r2 .

(2.21)

The calculation is simpliﬁed by ﬁrst considering the problem in momentum space.
The corresponding quantity Sq =

d3 r e−ıq·r C(r) is known in scattering theory as

static structure factor [26, 31] and quantiﬁes the scattering rate of a probe particle
as a function of the momentum transfer q. For a Fermi sea one can directly write

Sq =

1 
nk (1 − nk+q ) ,V k(2.22)

i.e. the probability to scatter a Fermion from momentum state k into momentum
state k + q is proportional to the product of the occupation number nk of the initialstate and the probability 1 − nk+q , that the ﬁnal momentum state k + q is empty.
With the explicit knowledge of Sq , the correlation function is now obtained by
Fourier transforming (2.22) back to coordinate space which givesC(r) =

d3 q
1 
ıq·r
S
e
=
n
δ(r)
−
|
nk eık·r | 2 .
q
(2π)3
V k

(2.23)The summation over all momentum states can be rewritten as a known integral andeventually one ﬁnds for T → 0
C(r) = n δ(r) −9n2 sin kF r
− cos kF r)2((kF r)4 kF r

(2.24)

with the Fermi wave vector kF = (6π 2 n)1/3 . It is worth noting that this correlation
21

C(kFr)
1

2

3

4

5

kFr

7

6

-0.2
-0.4
-0.6
-0.8
-1

Figure 2-2: Density-density correlation function for a zero temperature noninteracting Fermi gas. C(r) is measured in arbitrary units and plotted as a functionof kF r. Due to Pauli exclusion one ﬁnds a correlation hole of approximate width kF−1
near the origin.

function - depicted in Fig. 2-2 - follows a power-law decay, i.e. as expected for agapless system there is no characteristic correlation length.
From (2.24) the zero temperature number ﬂuctuations inside a spherical probe
volume of radius R are obtained as (ΔN )2 =

 
V

3
3
V d r1 d r2 C(|r1 − r2 |) and since

C depends only on r = |r1 − r2 |, the double integration can be replaced with a
one-dimensional integral leading to(ΔN )2 =

  
V

V

V

d3 r1 d3 r2 δ(r1 − r2 − r) C(r) dr =

 2R

dr 4πr2 Ω(r) C(r)(2.25)

0with the geometrical overlap function Ω(r) = π/12 (4R+r) (2R−r)2 . The integration
can be performed exactly in terms of complex integral functions [32, 31] and forkF R > 1 one asymptotically ﬁnds
(ΔN )2 =(kF R)21
1)ln(A kF R) −ln(B kF R) + O(
2
2
2π
24π
kF R

(2.26)

with the constants A = 4 eγ−1/2 and B = 4 eγ−5/12 and γ = 0.577... being Euler’s
constant. This conﬁrms that zero temperature quantum ﬂuctuations in an ideal

22

Fermi gas scale with N 2/3 ln (const · N 1/3 ); they can be interpreted as a surface term
∝ R2 representing particle projection noise on the probe volume surface and theircontribution compared to Pauli suppressed thermal ﬂuctuations proportional to N
becomes particularly relevant for small probe volumes.

2.4

Fluctuations in an interacting Fermi gas

The discussion so far focused on density ﬂuctuations in a cold spin-polarized ideal
Fermi gas. A two-component system of interacting Fermions gives rise to new phenomena and exhibits qualitatively diﬀerent noise properties. By measuring ﬂuctuations in linear combinations of the two pseudospin component densities n1 and n2
one can access quantities like Δ(n1 + n2 ) or Δ(n1 − n2 ) that are directly linked to thecompressibility or spin susceptibility of the gas.
First consider the case of weak interactions with |kF a| < 1. The parameter kF a,
where a denotes the s-wave scattering length, characterizes the ultra-low energy atomatom interaction between the two spin states. In the 1950s L. D. Landau developeda theoretical approach that connects the ideal Fermi gas via the concept of quasiparticles to an interacting Fermi liquid. Landau’s Fermi liquid theory [33] makes it
possible to derive perturbative expressions that relate the isothermal compressibility
κ and spin susceptibility χ of a weakly interacting Fermi gas to those of an ideal
zero temperature Fermi gas, i.e. κ0 = 3/2nF and χ0 = 3n/2F . At this point noderivation is presented but for later reference the results are provided. Following[33, 34, 35] one ﬁnds
κ0 /κ = (1 + F0s )m/m∗

andχ0 /χ = (1 + F0a )m/m∗(2.27)

with the eﬀective mass m∗ = m(1 + F1s /3) and the lth angular momentum symmetricand antisymmetric Landau parameters (to second order in kF a)

23

2
8
kF a + 2 (2 + ln 2)(kF a)2
π
3π

and

F1s =

2
8
F0a = − kF a − 2 (1 − ln 2)(kF a)2
π
3π

and

F1a = −

F0s =8
(7 ln 2 − 1)(kF a)22
5π(2.28)

and8(2 + ln 2)(kF a)2 .
5π 2(2.29)

Employing the Landau parameters one can in analogy ﬁnd an extended version ofequation (2.26) describing how quantum ﬂuctuations are aﬀected by interactions between the two spin components of the gas [35].
Explicitly calculating the previous expressions for κ and χ conﬁrms the intuitive
expectation that the compressibility increases for attractive interactions and decreases
for repulsive interactions, whereas the spin susceptibility becomes smaller with attractive interactions and increases for repulsive interactions.
In addition to the eﬀects of weak interactions discussed so far, an ultracold interacting Fermi gas will demonstrate BEC-BCS crossover physics [36] when tuning
the interactions (via a Feshbach resonance) through the strongly interacting region
with |kF a| > 1. This implies a very diﬀerent behavior of the gas on the BCS and on
the BEC side. While the many-body BCS state is characterized by pair associations
in momentum space, the BEC side corresponds to the Bose-Einstein condensationof bound dimers. Being composed of two atoms of opposite spins, these dimers(molecules) strongly aﬀect the noise properties of the gas and lead, for instance, to a
suppression of Δ(n1 − n2 ) ﬂuctuations on length scales larger than the molecule size.

24

2.5

Density ﬂuctuations and light scattering

To measure number ﬂuctuations all experiments presented in this thesis employ lightscattering for the localization and counting of atoms within a certain probe volume.
Therefore it is appropriate to further emphasize some of the underlying physicalprinciples that describe the probing of a cloud of atoms with a coherent light ﬁeld.
Consider ﬁrst the very general scenario of a scattering experiment, where a collimated beam of probe particles (e.g. electrons, neutrons, photons...) is directed ontoa target system (e.g. a crystal, a cloud of atoms...) and the interaction-induced deﬂection of the probe particles is measured. In such a case the interaction potential
can be written as4

Vint =V (ri − R) ,(2.30)iwhere R denotes the position of the probe particle and the ri are the positions of thetarget system particles. By Fourier transforming this potential one obtains

Vint =

iwith ρq =

 
i

q

Vq eıq·(ri −R) =qVq ρ∗q e−ıq·R(2.31)

d3 r δ(r − ri ) e−ıq·r being the Fourier transform of the particle density.

Assuming weak coupling the probe beam is described as a plane wave with initialwave vector P and ﬁnal wave vector P − q, the target system is initially in its groundstate |i and after the scattering event in the excited state |f  with momentum q.
Therefore the transition matrix element becomesf, P − q |Vint | i, P = Vq f |ρ∗q | i ,4(2.32)The interaction potential is assumed to not depend on the relative velocity of the particles. Fora more detailed discussion see [34].

25

i.e. a scattering act with momentum transfer q requires a density modulation at thatwave vector.
This connection, which is just rephrasing the basic concept of Fourier optics, canbe illustrated by a simple example: Consider a conﬁned gas of N atoms irradiatedby a coherent light source. Each atom will act as an externally driven oscillator andcontribute to the far ﬁeld distribution at a given observation point R0 . One can
now divide the atoms into two groups, those that contribute a ﬁeld of positive phasefactor and those that contribute a ﬁeld of negative phase factor. With Npos atoms
in the ﬁrst group and Nneg = N − Npos belonging to the second group, the scatteredintensity into the direction of R0 becomes I = I0 (Npos − Nneg )2 with I0 being thescattered intensity for a single atom. Assuming a random distribution of the atoms
among the two groups (binomial with equal probability) one expects (ΔNpos )2 = N/4
and therefore
I = I0 (Npos − Nneg )2  = I0 (2Npos − N )2  = I0 N ,(2.33)

i.e. the scattering intensity is simply proportional to N . Furthermore, equation (2.33)
conﬁrms that no scattering can occur for a uniform distribution of atoms: Destructive
interference cancels the scattered ﬁeld everywhere except in the forward direction.
Overall this discussion of light scattering completes the main purpose of this theory
overview, the presentation of the triad of scattering properties, ﬂuctuations and linear
response of a thermodynamic system. The results obtained for the case of a degenerate
Fermi gas are the foundation for the analysis of the experimental ﬁndings describedin the following chapters.

26

Chapter 3
Measuring ﬂuctuations in an ideal
Fermi gas
This chapter focuses on the experiment reported in the following publication: C. Sanner, E. J. Su, A. Keshet, R. Gommers, Y. Shin, W. Huang, and W. Ketterle, “Suppression of Density Fluctuations in a Quantum Degenerate Fermi Gas”. Included inAppendix A.

Precisely measuring ﬂuctuations in the density distribution of a cloud of ultracold
atoms poses several experimental challenges. When introducing a new measurement
method it is therefore advisable to ﬁrst demonstrate it with a well-understood physicalsystem. The experiment described in this chapter follows this strategy by repeatedly
producing expanded clouds of a non-interacting Fermi gas and then counting thenumber of atoms in a small probe volume within the extended cloud. Subsequentstatistical analysis of the counting results is expected to reveal Pauli suppression of
ﬂuctuations.

27

3.1

Measurements in trap and after ballistic expansion

With the theoretical infrastructure developed in the previous chapter it is straightforward to adapt the results obtained for homogeneous systems to the case of harmonically conﬁned1 gas clouds by employing the local density approximation (LDA) [32].
For suﬃciently smooth conﬁnement potentials U (r) that vary only weakly over thecorrelation length of the homogeneous gas, the gas cloud is decomposed into smaller
subpieces with the same properties as the homogeneous gas of identical temperature
and with local chemical potential μlocal = μ − U (r).
In the case of ballistic expansion, the adaption is not as readily obtained. Consider
for instance an ideal Fermi gas conﬁned by a box potential to a cube of volume
L3 . Upon release from this trap the gas will expand isotropically (reﬂecting theisotropic momentum distribution of the Fermi gas even if the trapping potential isdeformed) and after long2 times of ﬂight t the density distribution represents the initialmomentum distribution. More quantitatively, the via LDA obtained semiclassical [37]Fermi distribution function

f0 (r, p) =1eβ(p2 /2m+U (r)−μ) + 1(3.1)

is mapped to the expanded cloud following the ballistic law
f (r, p, t) = f0 (r − p t/m, p) .

(3.2)

For the homogeneous Fermi gas expanding out of the box potential this corresponds toan eﬀective truncation of the original momentum distribution when observing the gas(for simplicity) around the former center of the trap at r = 0; the atom noise is mostly
1

To a good approximation, an optical dipole trap provides harmonic conﬁnement around its trap
center.
2
such that the size of the expanded cloud is large compared to L28

Ballistic Expansion
p

p

2pF
x

x
2pF

Figure 3-1: One-dimensional phase space diagram of ballistic expansion of a harmonically trapped ideal Fermi gas. Ballistic expansion shears the initially occupied
spherical area into an ellipse. In the center of the cloud, the local Fermi momentum
and the sharpness of the Fermi distribution are scaled by the same factor, keeping theratio of local temperature to Fermi energy constant. The same is true for all points
in the expanded cloud relative to their corresponding unscaled in-trap points.

”localized” at the higher momentum states close to the Fermi surface and during timeof ﬂight the corresponding particles will ﬂy further apart. In other words, while no
information is lost when globally analyzing the gas, the expansion will generally alter
the local noise properties leading to noise distributions that cannot simply be mapped
point to point between the initial and expanded gas cloud.
However, for the special case of an harmonic conﬁnement with U (x) = m2 ω 2 x2
and equivalent momentum and coordinate space wave functions, a simple mapping ispossible. Figure 3-1 tries to illustrate this by comparing schematic 1D plots of the
distribution function f (r, p, t) for times before and after some expansion. Still considering the distributions at r = 0 equations (3.1) and (3.2) show that the expansion
converts
1

f (0, p, 0) =e2
1
( p −μ)kB T 2m

into
+1

1

f (0, p, t) =e2
1
( p −γμ)kB γT 2m

(3.3)
+1

with rescaling3 factor γ = (1 + ω 2 t2 )−1 and trap frequency ω. Apparently, expansion
out of an harmonic conﬁnement is equivalent to a local rescaling of temperature T and
3

Reference [38] provides a more rigorous treatment of the scaling formalism.

29

chemical potential μ such that the fugacity z = eμ/(kB T ) stays constant. Therefore, itfollows via equations (2.17) and (2.19) that in this case the relative noise propertiesof the gas are preserved.

3.2

The experimental procedure

To realize the laid out experimental agenda of repeatedly producing cold non-interacting
Fermi gas clouds and then letting them expand to perform spatially resolved atom
counting, it is necessary to employ a reliable Fermi gas apparatus and develop an
appropriate sample preparation scheme. For details about the experimental infrastructure confer [39, 40]. Here the basic setup is only quickly sketched, detailed explanations and extensive discussions can be found in the aforementioned references andreferences therein.

3.2.1

Fermi gas apparatus

All experiments described in this thesis were carried out on MIT’s second generation
BEC2 cold neutral atom machine. The apparatus was originally devised to produce
degenerate bosonic gases of 23 Na but was later upgraded to a double-species machine
also producing fermionic 6 Li samples. Being designed around a Ioﬀe-Pritchard typemagnetic trap with slightly modiﬁed coil geometry to facilitate improved optical access, the system is comprised of a hot atoms source (vapor pressure oven with separate
alkali reservoirs), a Zeeman slower and a central UHV glass cell. Laser setups for thesodium (1178 nm Yb ﬁber laser with Raman ampliﬁer and frequency doubler) andlithium (671 nm diode laser) wavelengths generate the light necessary to magnetooptically trap (MOT) and cool the atoms. An additional 1064 nm 20 W ﬁber laser
makes it possible to create far-oﬀ-resonance optical dipole traps (ODTs) to further
manipulate the atom samples. All laser light is delivered to the main optical table
via single-mode ﬁber cables. The various components of the apparatus are controlled
and synchronized by a computer system with intuitive software user interface. A typical experimental run cycle from starting the MOT loading to releasing a quantum
30

degenerate Fermi gas out of the ODT takes between 30 to 40 seconds.

3.2.2

Sample preparation

In the following a short overview in table form of the Fermi gas sample preparation
steps is provided. References [41, 40] contain further details.
1. Double-species eﬀusive ovens create a hot collimated atomic beam.
2. A Zeeman slower decelerates the atoms.
3. Overlapping MOTs for Na and Li are being loaded from the slowed atomic
beam.
4. The MOTs are switched oﬀ and the Na and Li atoms are optically pumped into
the magnetically trappable stretched states |F = 2, mF = 2, and |3/2, 3/2respectively.
5. The atoms are loaded into a magnetic trap with high bias ﬁeld such that thediﬀerent states can be resolved in microwave spectroscopy.
6. Appropriate microwave sweeps are applied to recycle and clean up sodium atoms
in the wrong states.
7. Sodium is evaporatively cooled employing the |2, 2 → |1, 1 microwave transition near 1.77 GHz.
8. Towards the end of the evaporation the magnetic trap is adiabatically decompressed to lower the sodium density and avoid three-body losses.
9. After the sodium is completely evaporated, the sympathetically cooled lithium
is transferred into a tightly focused ODT.
10. A RF Landau-Zener sweep around 228 MHz transfers the lithium atoms to thelowest lying |1/2, 1/2 state.

31

11. The sample is exposed to a high magnetic ﬁeld of about 300 G where thediﬀerent mi states within the mj = −1/2 triplet develop an almost B ﬁeld
independent split of ≈ 100 MHz.
12. Repeated RF sweeps are applied to create an equal spin mixture of the twolowest ground states |1 = |mj = −1/2, mi = 1 and |2 = |mj = −1/2, mi = 0,
corresponding to the low ﬁeld states |F = 1/2, mF = 1/2 and |F = 1/2, mF =−1/2.
13. The atoms are adiabatically transferred from the tight single ODT into a crossed
dipole trap created by two orthogonally overlapped single ODTs.
14. Forced evaporation induced by lowering the ODT trap depth cools the sample
further down. Subsequently the gas cloud is recompressed.
15. The magnetic bias ﬁeld is adjusted to around 527 G, where a magneticallytunable Feshbach resonance causes a zero crossing of the scattering length,
creating a two-component ideal Fermi gas.
16. Finally the ODTs are extinguished and after 7 ms of ballistic expansion anabsorption image resonant with state |2 is acquired.
By changing the evaporation trap depth this procedure is adjusted to produce
cold 6 Li gas clouds containing N = 2.5 × 106 atoms per spin state with T = 0.2 TF .
The ﬁnal round crossed dipole trap has radial and axial trap frequencies of ωr =2π × 160 s−1 and ωz = 2π × 230 s−1 corresponding to an in-trap Fermi energy of
EF = (6N )1/3 h̄ωho = kB × 2.15 μK, with ωho = (ωr2 ωz )1/3 being the geometrical
average of the three trapping frequencies.

32

3.3

How to count atoms in a box - Experimental
challenges and constraints

The above experimental procedure facilitates the reliable production of non-interacting
Fermi gas clouds that can now become subject to a spatially resolved atom counting.
Taking a quantitative photographic image of the cloud is the standard way to realize
this goal.

3.3.1

Diﬀerent imaging methods

Various imaging methods have been adapted to the case of cold atoms. They cantypically be divided into three classes, i.e. absorption imaging, ﬂuorescence imaging and dispersive4 imaging, and they all rely on the interaction of the atoms withresonant or near-resonant light. While absorption and dispersive imaging detect thelight transmitted through the sample (small angle scattering assuming that the atoms
are illuminated with a collimated laser beam), ﬂuorescence imaging collects the lightscattered oﬀ axis, often observing orthogonally to the probe laser beam. The underlying atom - light interaction process is quantum mechanically well understood[42] and the selection of a particular method for a certain experimental scenario isbased on achieving an optimum signal-to-noise ratio. For expanded quantum gas
clouds resonant absorption imaging is normally the method of choice. This is due to
its technical simplicity and the fact that appropriate densities can be conveniently
adjusted by changing the time of ﬂight.
In a semiclassical picture [43] the atoms exposed to near-resonant light are described as charged oscillators under the inﬂuence of an incident electric drive ﬁeld.
The corresponding equation of motion relates the induced polarization P = 0 (−1)E
to the external drive ﬁeld E so that one ﬁnds for the relative5 dielectric constant
4
Dispersive imaging measures the phase shift light is experiencing when passing through an
optically thicker or thinner medium. The imaging system is set up so that the phase shift is converted
into an intensity variation. Confer chapter 4 for a detailed analysis of dispersive imaging.
5
relative to the vacuum permittivity 0 = 8.85 × 10−12 Fm−133 = n2refwithnref = 1 +

ı
σ0 nλ
δ
(
−
)
2
4π 1 + δ
1 + δ2(3.4)

being the complex index of refraction. σ0 = 3λ2 /(2π) denotes the resonant light0
scattering cross section [42], λ the wavelength, n the atom density and δ = ω−ωisΓ/2

the detuning in half linewidths. When traveling through the atom sample the probe
light wave vector k0 is accordingly modiﬁed to k = k0 nref , which means for a planeı(k z−ωt)wave E0 0

an intensity attenuation (imaginary part of nref ) by a factor
1)
1 + δ2(3.5)

σ0 n2D δ,
2 1 + δ2

(3.6)

T = exp(−σ0 n2D

and a phase shift (real part of nref ) of
Δφ = −

where n2D =n dz denotes the density integrated along the propagation direction(column density). It is important to note that the last equations rely on several
assumptions (two-level system, intensities well below the saturation intensity, thinlens approximation etc.) implying various constraints that will be discussed later on.
All the above mentioned imaging methods try to reconstruct n2D from direct orindirect measurements of transmission T or phase shift Δφ. Absorption imaging
straightforwardly measures T (therefore it is also called transmission imaging) bycomparing on a linear CCD detector the probe light intensity distribution with andwithout atoms present. The quantity observed in ﬂuorescence imaging can be mapped
to 1 − T since the ”missing” light that was removed from the probe beam is now
detected and dispersive imaging obtains a signal that relates to Δφ.
The typical column density of an expanded gas cloud prepared according to theaforementioned procedure is n2D ≈ 5 × 1012 m−2 leading to an on-resonance (δ = 0)
optical density of ODe = − ln T ≈ 1. This amount of transmission is ideally suited34

for direct CCD camera measurements since it delivers a large signal without exceeding the dynamic range of the measurement, i.e. each atom contributes with its fullscattering cross section and the images are not blacked out. In principle one can more
systematically calculate and compare the obtainable S/N values for the various imaging conﬁgurations but particularly in the context of atom noise measurements suchan approach can potentially be misleading given that imperfections and a multitudeof other noise sources and systematic nonlinear eﬀects dominate when deﬁning theuseful parameter space for a certain imaging method.

3.3.2

Atom noise and other noise sources

Every measurement process is accompanied by noise. When a certain type of noise
itself is in the focus of the measurement, one has to distinguish between wanted andunwanted noise. Clearly, in the case of atom noise detection via resonant absorption
imaging, photon shot noise can be a signiﬁcant noise competitor.
Image acquisition with a CCD camera
Consider the typical experimental scenario of a CCD detector that measures via a
two-dimensional array of small6 light sensitive pixels the spatial intensity distributionof an incoming light beam. An optical imaging system between the illuminated atoms
and the detector maps the intensity distribution directly behind the atoms to an often
magniﬁed image on the CCD. The digital image signal read out from the camera after
the exposure is the basis for a subsequent noise analysis. Each pixel of a n-bit camera
produces an integer output reading S between 0 and 2n −1 ADU (analog-digital units),
linearly scaling with the amount of accumulated electrons7 in that pixel. Dependingon the internal conversion gain c of the detector, x accumulated electrons lead to an
output signal S = cx. Scientiﬁc CCD camera systems oﬀer adjustable readout gains
with high gain settings up to one ADU per electron.
6

The typical square pixel size of modern CCD cameras ranges between 5 and 20 μm.
A photon hitting a CCD pixel causes on average the release of η electrons. η is the quantum
eﬃciency of the detector.
735

Transmission
Transmission

(A)

(B)

Figure 3-2: Transmission images of an expanded Fermi gas cloud. Image (A) was
acquired employing a low intensity probe beam, while image (B) was obtained using
a probe beam of higher intensity. Both images contain the same (vertically truncated)envelop density proﬁle information, but the low intensity image (A) is visibly more
noisy in the regions away from the atom cloud due to increased relative photon shotnoise. The numbers on the horizontal and vertical axes are pixel counting coordinates.

Photon shot noise
If a photon counting detector is exposed to a classical light source like coherent
laser light and receives on average P  photons (e.g. for a certain exposure time atconstant intensity), the probability p (P ) to detect P photons in another run of thesame experiment has to follow a Poisson distribution [43]p (P ) =P P e−P .
P!

This distribution with its standard deviation ΔP =


(3.7)


P  leads to considerable

amounts of relative noise ΔP/P  = 1/ P  for small P . Figure 3-2 illustrates
this by comparing two transmission images of a similar atom cloud, one obtainedwith low intensity probe light and the other one obtained with higher intensity illumination. Noise measurements are normally performed in a ”vertical” fashion, i.e.
by analyzing the ﬂuctuations of the same pixel along many repeated images, but forthe purpose of demonstrating the role of photon shot noise it is equivalent to do a”horizontal” analysis within one image and obtain a visual impression by comparing
many neighboring pixels. It is important to realize that photon shot noise is observedin the spatial domain and in the time domain.
36

Intensity [ADU]

Intensity [ADU]

Atom number per pixel(B)

Transmission

(A)

(C)

(D)

Figure 3-3: A transmission image of an expanded 6 Li Fermi gas cloud is obtained bynormalizing the intensity distribution of an oﬀset-corrected P W A − DF image (A)with respect to an P W OA − DF image (B). Even though the illumination is very
non-uniform and full of fringes, the resulting transmission image (C) is clean anddoes not exhibit any visible fringe structure. To ensure a linear response, the atoms
were exposed to low-intensity (low compared to the saturation intensity) probe lightfor a very short interval, so that on average every atom scattered only one photon.
From the transmission, the corresponding atom number per pixel column is derived
via equation (3.5) and displayed in image (D). Elliptical contour lines help to localize
corresponding points in the images. The ﬁeld of view is 2 mm × 2 mm.

The transmission image
As discussed earlier in this chapter a transmission image is generated by acquiring
several raw images, i.e. 2D integer arrays, from the camera. The ﬁrst image, thepicture with atoms (P W A), is taken by exposing the atoms to a short (few microseconds to tens of microseconds exposure time) well deﬁned resonant probe light pulse
and looking with the camera on-axis through an appropriate imaging system onto
the atom sample. The image records the probe light intensity distribution as locally37

modiﬁed by absorbing atoms. A second image, the picture without atoms (P W OA),
is taken for normalization purposes under identical conditions but without atoms.
Ideally the wait time between the two exposures is rather short so that unavoidable
drifts in the experimental setup are common-mode to these two images. Finally athird image, the dark frame (DF ), is obtained by triggering an exposure sequence
without probe light present. This makes it possible to correct the other two images forshot-to-shot reproducible background oﬀsets. Overall the transmission image (T I) is
now derived as T I = (P W A − DF )/(P W OA − DF ). It is the natural starting point
for all further image analysis; interpreting the transmission image is signiﬁcantly easier compared to directly observing the P W A image because all residual structuresand imperfections in the coherent illumination beam (as long as they are unchanged
between P W A and P W OA like fringes from back reﬂections, dust particles etc.) arecanceled out by the normalization process. Figure 3-3 demonstrates this impressively.
Photon shot noise propagation
For a proper noise analysis it is necessary to decompose the noise observed in theprocessed images back into the basic noise components found in the raw images. The
oﬀset-corrected average signal read from a single pixel can be written as S = η P  cwith the already introduced average photon number P , the detection quantum
eﬃciency η and the conversion gain c. Applying Poisson statistics for a classical lightsource one therefore expects ΔS = cη P  with the deterministic scaling gain c

before the square root and the stochastic attenuation factor η under the square root.
This leads to


ΔS =

S c

(3.8)

and makes it possible to calculate via error propagation the photon shot noise observedin a transmission image. Starting from an oﬀset-corrected image pair S1 = P W A −DF and S2 = P W OA − DF with transmission image T I = S1 /S2 in a region with38

average transmission t = S1  / S2  yields for the variance1S1 
ΔS1 )2 + (−ΔS2 )2S2 
S2 2
1 √t= (ΔS2 )2t ΔS2 )2 + (
S2 
S2 
t2 c
tc
+
.
=
S2 
S2 

(Δph T I)2 = (For t = 1 (i.e. no absorption) the last result simpliﬁes to Δph T I =(3.9)(3.10)(3.11)

2c/S2 , whichquantitatively conﬁrms the observations from Figure 3-2.
While the transmission image is the ﬁrst step in the image processing chain, it has
the shortcoming of providing a multiplicative signal that is not proportionally scaling
with the atom count in the corresponding pixel column. This is easily ﬁxed by taking
the logarithm (Lambert-Beer law) and obtaining the additive optical density image
OD = − ln(T I). For resonant absorption imaging, the optical density equals the
product of resonant scattering cross section σ0 and column density n2D , in accordancewith equation (3.5). Analogously to (3.9) one ﬁnds for the photon shot noise variancein OD = − ln(S1 /S2 ) images

11ΔS1 )2 + (ΔS2 )2
S1 
S2 
√
1
1
= (
{ΔS2 } )2{ΔSe−d } )2 + (2−dS2  eS2 cd
(1 + e )=S2 (Δph OD)2 = (−(3.12)(3.13)(3.14)

in regions with average8 optical density d = − ln t.
The calculations following equations (3.9) and (3.12) indirectly assumed that the8Note that − ln(S1  / S2 ) = − ln(S1 /S2 ) even for S1  / S2  = 1. The exponential scaling
skews the probability distribution.

39

P W A image and the P W OA image were acquired with the same exposure parameters(probe light intensity and duration), but it is worth noting that noise-wise this is notnecessarily the optimum conﬁguration. Obviously, increasing S1 and S2 reduces thephoton shot noise induced uncertainty Δph OD, however, the discussion later on willshow that to maintain a linear atomic response there are stringent limits for the maximum intensity and photon number interacting with the atoms. In order to reduce
Δph OD it is therefore experimentally not viable to simply increase the P W A andP W OA probe signals in parallel. Nevertheless, while keeping a suﬃciently low lightlevel for P W A one can still increase the P W OA normalization probe and obtain ascaled image S02 with very low relative photon shot noise ΔS02 /S02 . Mathematicallyrescaling S02 back to an S1 -equivalent S2 = S02 /q results in an appropriate normalization image S2 with the low noise properties ΔS2 /S2 = (ΔS02 /q) / (S02 /q) of the S02
image9 . Eﬀectively this pre-scaling procedure eliminates the second term in equation(3.12) and can therefore signiﬁcantly improve the signal-to-noise ratio in standard
absorption imaging. In practice however, the scaling factor q is not arbitrarily large
but rather limited by detection linearity requirements and sometimes even a small q
can introduce systematic artifacts, e.g. from enhanced indirect diﬀuse light leakage
into the detector.
Atom shot noise
The atom cloud does not only homogeneously attenuate the resonant probe light asassumed in the previous section; in addition the localization of atoms into the diﬀerent
pixel columns of geometrical cross section A reveals the actual quantity of interest,
the atom shot noise. Considering a classical ideal gas one expects Poissonian atom
number ﬂuctuations, i.e. a pixel column with average optical density d and containing√
on average N = d A/σ0 atoms will exhibit ﬂuctuations ΔN = N , corresponding to
additional optical density noise
9
In short, ”mathematical” attenuation is noise-wise superior to physically adjusting the photon
ﬂux.

40

(Δatom OD)2 = d

σ0.
A(3.15)For the experimental detection of atom noise it is beneﬁcial to optimize the ratio(Δatom OD)2 / (Δph OD)2 of wanted to unwanted noise. The relevant expression d/(1+ed ) has a maximum around d = 1.3, suggesting to preferably perform noise analysis
with absorption images in regions with an average optical density of 1.3, corresponding
to a transmission of about 30 percent.
Technical noise
In addition to the noise sources discussed so far the image acquisition process isaccompanied by technical noise generated in the CCD detector. Of the two major
contributions, dark current noise10 and readout noise, only the readout noise is relevant in the context of this thesis. Reading out the charge from the individual pixels of
the CCD is a multi-step process. By applying appropriate gate voltages the charges
are sequentially transported over the whole pixel array and arrive eventually at thereadout register and ampliﬁer. Every electronic ampliﬁcation process is noisy anddepending on input impedance and bandwidth (reciprocally scaling with the readouttime) of the ampliﬁer one expects a certain noise ﬂoor. The readout noise r in highquality CCD detectors is typically on the order of 5 electrons rms at low readout
speeds and therefore rather small compared to the expected photon and atom shotnoises.
The eﬀects of the readout noise on the overall noise budget are readily modeledby adding (in quadrature) an uncorrelated oﬀset noise per image to the photon shotnoise expression as obtained in equation (3.12) et seq., which means that the terms√
in the curly brackets are augmented by Δread = rc 2, so that {...} is replaced by{...}2 + 2r2 c2 . The factor 2 comes from the fact that the contributing images S1 and

10
Even in complete darkness, a CCD detector slowly accumulates thermally generated electrons
in its pixels. Cooling the CCD chip in modern camera systems reduces the dark current down toless than 0.02 electrons per pixel per second, causing negligible oﬀsets and noise for short exposure
times.

41

S2 were obtained by subtracting a dark frame from the P W A and P W OA images.
The DF image contributes an equal amount of readout noise.

3.3.3

Nonlinear eﬀects and other limitations

So far the atom - light interaction was assumed to be a linear process. The measurement and noise analysis procedures discussed in the previous section heavily relyon this assumption. On the other hand, the obtained equations like (3.9) and (3.12)
motivate higher light levels for better atom-noise to photon-noise ratios, potentiallyrendering linear approximations invalid.
Saturation of the atomic transition
Reconsidering the elementary light scattering process [44] where an atom absorbs aphoton and re-emits it after an excited state lifetime τ , corresponding to a natural
spectral linewidth Γ = τ −1 of the transition, it is clear that the scattering rate γ islinearly scaling with the incoming photon ﬂux only if γ  1/τ . In terms of lightintensity I one therefore ﬁnds the requirement I  Is with the saturation intensity
Is = h̄ωΓ/(2σ0 ) and beyond this the scattering rate is given by

γ=(I/Is ) (Γ/2)
1 + I/Is + δ 2(3.16)

with frequency ω and detuning δ as deﬁned at the beginning of this chapter. Typicalvalues for the saturation intensity of alkali atoms are on the order of few mW/cm2 ,e.g. Is = 2.5 mW/cm2 for 6 Li atoms on the D2 line. The full equation (3.16) must
lead to an intensity dependent index of refraction; only in the limit I  Is thedenominator in the scattering rate expression approximately equals 1 so that thediﬀerential intensity decrement dI of a weak probe beam traveling through the atomgas becomes simply proportional to I. In this case one recovers equations (3.5) and(3.6) such that the atomic column density can be obtained without knowledge of theabsolute illumination intensity.
42

With nonlinear behavior due to saturation eﬀects it becomes more troublesome
to quantitatively interpret a transmission or optical density image. In principle it isstraightforward to apply a saturation correction based on the intensity distribution
as measured in the P W OA image, but unavoidable errors (e.g. from additional intensity variations and interference patterns caused by optical components after theatom cloud) can easily falsify the results. For a non-uniform probe beam this would
lead to an eﬀective ”imprint” of probe beam intensity inhomogeneities into the atom
distribution. Given that a free-space coherent laser beam passing through various
optical elements will almost always accumulate fringes and other intensity textureson all length scales (see Figure 3-3 (A) and (B)), this imprint mechanism could
severely aﬀect the outcome of noise measurements, leading to an overestimation of
atom noise. Furthermore, bleaching (i.e. oversaturating) the atomic transition iseﬀectively equivalent to reducing the scattering cross section, which counterproductively reduces Δatom OD as seen in equation (3.15).
Displacement blurring and recoil induced detuning
From the discussion in the previous paragraph it might appear tempting to increase
the detected photon number (and therefore reduce the photon shot noise) by increasing the duration instead of the intensity of the probe light pulse. However, thisapproach comes with two negative side eﬀects.
First, every photon that is scattered by an atom transfers recoil momentum to
it. Along the direction of the probe beam, an atom of mass m acquires a velocity
vfwd = vrec N after having scattered N photons with wave vector k, each adding a
recoil velocity of vrec = h̄k/m in the forward direction. The isotropic reemission√of the photons causes another random walk velocity vrnd = vrec N that leads to atransversal displacement of the atoms. For light 6 Li atoms that scatter a few photons
with vrec = 0.1 m/s one ﬁnds negligible displacements for short exposure times of a few
microseconds, but many photons scattered over a longer time interval will eventuallycause signiﬁcant displacements aﬀecting the noise analysis.
The second eﬀect imposing a (more severe) limit onto the total number of scattered43

photons is the recoil induced Doppler detuning. For resonant absorption imaging theprobe light frequency is adjusted to be on resonance with atoms at rest. Being
accelerated away from the light source, the light frequency ν appears red-shifted byΔν in the atom’s reference frame. Each on-axis recoil causes an additional Doppler
shift Δν/ν = vrec /c, where c stands for the speed of light. For each scattered photon
a 6 Li atom accumulates a detuning of Δν = 150 kHz, i.e. after scattering only ten
photons per atom, a 6 Li (Γ6 Li = 2π × 5.9 MHz) sample’s apparent optical density
will be reduced to 80 percent of its on-resonance value. The implications for noise
measurements are similar to those described in the paragraph about approaching thesaturation intensity (e.g. imprinting of intensity irregularities), but for the detuning
eﬀect only the total number of scattered photons counts, regardless of the intensity.
One possible remedy for this eﬀect is to intentionally blue-shift the imaging lightfrequency so that the eﬀective detuning is symmetrically scanned over the resonanceand not just sampling one wing of the Lorentzian resonance proﬁle; similar to asynchronized frequency sweep during the imaging pulse one can thereby achieve asmaller pulse-averaged detuning. Practically one ﬁnds that while these methods do
reduce the detuning-induced bleaching, they introduce additional experimental complications; overall it turns out that in the interest of a straight-forward image analysis
and reproducible conditions it is more beneﬁcial to employ low to moderate intensities and reduced photon numbers than to obtain better photon noise statistics at theprice of nonlinear complications.
Optical pumping into dark states
Another important aspect leading to nonlinear behavior is the multilevel structure of
real atoms. Even when performing imaging via a nominal cycling transition (a resonance that is in terms of selection rules the only transition drivable by the applied
light) there is a small probability to depump atoms into a dark state. Subsequently
these atoms cannot scatter additional photons causing falsiﬁed transmission measurements at higher imaging intensities or longer exposure times (i.e. when each atom is
expected to scatter on average several photons). To quantify this eﬀect it is necessary
44

to carefully consider all external admixtures to the ”ideal” two-level states. For example, in the case of the 6 Li atom one can analytically derive [45] the composition of
the six hyperﬁne ground states (see Figure 3-8) of the internal Hamiltonian in termsof the appropriate |ms mi  basis with the projection of the electron and nuclear spin,e.g.
|1 = sin θ+ |1/2, 0 − cos θ+ | − 1/2, 1 ,(3.17)

where θ+ is a magnetic ﬁeld dependent parameter causing a cycling probability
cos2 θ+ ≈ 0.995 for typical imaging ﬁelds around 500 G. While such theoretical estimates can provide initial insight, one typically ﬁnds that other experimental uncertainties (light polarization deviations etc.) do signiﬁcantly aﬀect the anticipatednumerical values.
Eventually the optimum imaging pulse parameters were experimentally determined by preparing similar Fermi gas clouds and systematically varying intensities
and exposure durations. Given that in the subsequent noise measurements pixel bin
sizes down to a few microns were employed, the exposure time was conservatively set
to 4 μs in order to avoid any displacement blurring issues. Scanning the intensity
while keeping this exposure duration revealed a dependence as depicted in Figure 34. Picking an intensity of about 10 percent of the saturation intensity turned out tobe a good compromise between the onset of nonlinear eﬀects and increasing levelsof photon shot noise. The section on image data analysis will provide more details
about the management of residual nonlinear eﬀects.
Image normalization imperfections
As previously discussed in the context of Figure 3-3, normalizing the S1 = P W A−DF
image by a S2 = P W OA − DF image, i.e. pixel-wise dividing S1 by S2 , ensures thecancelation of illumination non-uniformities as long as detector response and atomic
response are linear and as long as the non-uniform structures are static, i.e. unchanged

45

Opt ical densit y

1.4

1.2

1
0

0.05

0.1

Probe laser intensity (I / I s )Figure 3-4: Apparent optical density of an expanded Fermi gas cloud as a function ofprobe light intensity for a ﬁxed exposure time of 4 μs. The observed optical density
decreases with increasing probe light intensity. The line is a quadratic ﬁt to thedata. The reduction of the eﬀective scattering cross section is mainly due to the
Doppler eﬀect caused by acceleration of the atoms by radiation pressure; a smaller
reduction results from the partial saturation of the optical transition. At the probe
light intensity chosen in this study (shaded bar), the number of photons absorbed
per atoms is about 6. The decrease of the cross section is slightly larger than thatpredicted by simple models.

between the acquisition of S1 and S2 . The last requirement is not necessarily easy
to meet; fringes and other structures responsible for the illumination inhomogeneities
are typically the result of residual interferences and therefore extremely sensitive tovibrations and other disturbances in the imaging setup. Various strategies can help tominimize normalization imperfections - among them are passive means of stabilizing
the imaging system, post-selection of images, dynamically smoothing the illumination
proﬁle and minimizing the time interval between the P W A and P W OA images. Allof these methods will be discussed below in more detail.

3.4

The imaging system for noise measurements

With all the speciﬁc requirements for quantitative atom noise measurements the careful design of the imaging system is of particular importance. Relevant design aspects

46

Fiber Collimator

1:1

1/2 1/4

Linear Polarizer

1: 2

.

.

Slit Mask

Iris
UHV Glass Cell

CCD Detector Plane ->

1: 2

.

Figure 3-5: Imaging setup for noise measurements in expanded gas clouds. The atom
cloud (black dot in the vacuum glass cell) is illuminated by appropriately polarized(circular polarization obtained with the 1/2 and 1/4 waveplates for magnetic bias
ﬁelds along the propagation axis) imaging light projected through a narrow iris diaphragm. An intermediate image of the atoms is formed on an adjustable slit mask
and via a second 1:2 magniﬁcation stage the ﬁnal image of the atom cloud is focused
onto the CCD camera.

and various improvement attempts to achieve appropriate performance are describedin this section.

3.4.1

Overview of the imaging system

Optical imaging is a very universal scientiﬁc tool, widely used in many ﬁelds, andwith advanced lens designs engineers have been able to fulﬁll the most demanding
requirements. In many aspects, the criteria for an optimized noise measurement imaging system are diﬀerent from standard optical performance benchmarks. Therefore,
instead of providing an introduction to imaging theory11 , the following discussion will
mostly focus on noise-speciﬁc considerations.
Figure 3-5 provides a schematic of the imaging setup employed for noise measurements in expanded Fermi gases. The imaging light originates from an external cavity
diode laser system that is frequency locked to an atomic reference. Before being sent
via a polarization maintaining optical ﬁber to the main optical table, the light is11

For textbooks on optical imaging theory, see [46, 47] and references therein.

47

passed through an acousto-optic modulator and a mechanical shutter enabling fast
intensity control and high extinction-ratio switching. On the other end of the opticalﬁber the light is recollimated to a beam with about 5 mm 1/e2 -diameter by meansof an integrated ﬁber collimation package. Next, the polarization is cleaned up witha polarizing beam splitter cube and subsequently adjusted to any desired state via
a quarter- and a half-waveplate. By illuminating a small 2 mm aperture iris withthis beam and imaging it 1:1 via a cemented achromat onto the atom cloud it ispossible to obtain a relatively ﬂat and sharply conﬁned illumination background forthe atoms. Spatially reducing the illumination to the actual region of interest helps
minimizing potential back reﬂections and interference fringes. For the same reason
it is also advisable to use as few as possible optics components, all with high quality
narrow antireﬂection coatings.
In the next step a real 1:2 magniﬁed image of the atom cloud is formed througha two-component lens telescope, comprised of a f = 150 mm front achromat and af = 300 mm lens in the back. Positioned in the image plane is an adjustable slit
aperture, such that the relay image with vertical black borders can eventually be
re-imaged (again with 1:2 magniﬁcation) onto the camera, producing a ﬁnal image on
the CCD sensor, format-wise similar to those shown in Figure 3-2. The slit aperture in
the intermediate image plane makes it possible to operate the CCD detector in ”Fast
Kinetics” mode, a special high-speed acquisition mode where only a small verticalsubregion of the CCD chip can be exposed to light. The CCD’s square pixels are 13
μm wide and the chip surface is antireﬂection (AR) coated.
The last 1:2 imaging step is performed with a commercial Mitutoyo inﬁnite conjugate microscope objective plus corresponding tube lens. While the microscope
objective is built from several individual lenses, the elements are AR coated and theassembled package is sealed from contamination and dust. The optical performance(in terms of ﬂatness, ﬁeld of view, aberrations etc.) is far superior to simple two-lenssetups.
In total the optical system achieves a fourfold magniﬁcation and with its numerical48

aperture of N A = 0.14 provides a theoretical resolving power12 of about 2.5 microns.
Design priority is given to the suppression of fringes and other interference eﬀects;
elements with plane surfaces (e.g. waveplates) are therefore slightly tilted away fromnormal incidence to further reduce back reﬂections.
One-way imaging - suppression of back reﬂections
Interference fringes are particularly prone to jitter and other non-stationary behavior
when the contributing reﬂections travel over long distances. This is for instance thecase for parasitic reﬂections bouncing between the (uncoated) glass cell surface andthe (broadband AR coated) CCD chip window. Given that high contrast interference
fringes form already with relatively weak stray beams (the intensity scales quadratically with the electric ﬁeld superposition, i.e. two overlapped beams with an intensity
ratio of 100:1 can generate a fringe pattern with 20 percent contrast), AR coatingscannot completely eliminate the fringe issues.
Another way of suppressing back reﬂections is the implementation of an ”optical diode” within the imaging setup; being placed in front of the CCD camera it
could extinguish back reﬂected light from the CCD, preventing the above mentioned
long-distance fringes. In the case of incoming light with linear polarization this imaging diode is easily set up by combining an appropriately aligned linear polarizer andquarter waveplate: in the forward direction the incoming linearly polarized light istransmitted through the polarizer and becomes circularly polarized after the waveplate. Once reﬂected from the CCD chip surface, the handedness of the circularly
polarized beam is changed, so that in the reverse direction the waveplate turns theinverted circular polarization into orthogonal linear polarization that is then blocked
by the polarizer. Achievement of optical isolation using this scheme requires that thereﬂection be specular and that no other polarization modiﬁcations occur - requirements mostly fulﬁlled by the CCD surface. Furthermore, given that orthogonallypolarized beams cannot interfere, employing a polarizer is not mandatory; simply
12
The actual resolving power of a diﬀraction limited imaging system depends on details of theillumination but is roughly given by λ/(2 N A) with λ = 0.671 nm being the illumination lightwavelength.

49

adding a quarter waveplate in front of the camera can already signiﬁcantly reduce
interference fringes. It should be emphasized that unlike the atomic response the
CCD camera output does not depend on the polarization state of the detected light.
In practice the eﬀectiveness of this interference reduction scheme varies from setup
to setup, depending on the origin of the fringes. Adding more optical elements canalways introduce new interferences and particularly a polarizer will always cause
unwanted attenuation.

3.4.2

Detector optimization for noise measurements

Choosing an appropriate camera system and operating it with optimized settings plays
a key role for obtaining high quality noise measurements. From the earlier discussionof the various noise contributions and constraints it is clear that the system has tocomply with the following criteria:- Reliable mechanical construction with rigid mounting options- Quiet fan or water cooling to minimize intrinsic vibrations- Complete shielding from stray light (recessed position of the sensor, easy interfacing with lens tubing, built-in mechanical shutter etc.)- Adjustable conversion gain with low read noise- Clean dark frames free from technical artifacts- Good linearity over a wide dynamic range- High quantum eﬃciency in the red / near-IR region- Minimum number of optical surfaces between entrance window and sensor (allsurfaces AR coated)- Hardware pixel binning (the charge from neighboring pixels can be combined
and read out as a superpixel)

50

- Precise external cleaning, trigger, exposure and readout control- Ability to take two or more images in very fast succession (acquisition intervalsof a few hundred microseconds or less)
While many of these requirements are met by most of the commercially available scientiﬁc camera systems, it is important to realize that most systems are notspeciﬁcally designed for applications with coherent illumination. Very often cameras
are equipped with pre-assembled sensor packages where the actual sensor chip is protected with an additional cover glass window causing unwanted reﬂections. Ideallya single wedged window (AR coated on both sides) is the only element between thechip surface and the camera aperture. The sensor itself is preferably an AR coatedback-illuminated CCD13 oﬀering a quantum eﬃciency exceeding 90 percent in the
red wavelength region. Unlike a normal front-illuminated device where the electrodewiring partially obscures the photocathodes, the back-illuminated sensor is manufactured such that the light-sensitive photocathode layer is directly facing the incoming
light through a thinned substrate layer.
Fast Kinetics acquisition
Regarding the fast acquisition criterion in the above list, several technologies havebeen developed to accomplish exposure repetition rates of 10 kHz and faster. Withback-illuminated CCD sensors the method of choice is to operate the device in a
special readout mode often called ”Fast Kinetics Acquisition”. In Fast Kinetics (FK)operation mode only a small fraction of the pixel array is exposed to light and thedark region acts as a temporary storage area into which the FK-subimages are shiftedrow by row. Depending on the number of subimages and the total vertical height ofthe particular CCD chip, each subimage can only have a proportionally reduced pixel
height compared to a normally acquired image. The row-wise vertical charge transfer
across the pixel array is very fast with shift times of a few μs per row. For an array
13

Recently scientiﬁc CMOS sensors have been introduced. Their diﬀerent parallel-readout sensor
architecture makes it possible to achieve high-speed operation with very low read noise.

51

Detector signal [ADU]

PWA ->PWOA ->

Figure 3-6: Unprocessed Fast Kinetics frame containing the image of an expanded
atom gas cloud. The frame is vertically divided into eight subsections with the P W A
image in subframe 3 and the P W OA image in subframe 4. Due to technical constraints subframe 1 is contaminated with parasitic charges and needs to be discarded.
An electronic readout oﬀset of about 500 ADU ensures positive integer output values
for all pixels including those not exposed to light. By subtracting an analogous darkframe (DF ) this oﬀset is later removed. The time interval between the P W A andP W OA images amounts to 450 μs.

with a total of 1024 rows one could therefore obtain 8 subimages each 128 pixels highwith a wait time between the individual exposures of about 400 μs. Figure 3-6 shows
an example FK frame acquired with these parameters and read out using a 2 × 2
hardware binning so that all pixel dimensions are scaled by a factor of two. While
the row-wise vertical charge transport in FK mode is particularly fast, the completely
ﬁlled CCD is eventually read out in the same fashion as a normally operated CCD
device, i.e. via a slow (10 μs per pixel for low read noise) pixel by pixel readout
process. CCD readout between the closely spaced subimages is therefore not a feasible
experimental option.
Unless the image sensor is a specialized frame-transfer CCD with built-in opaquemask to cover the dark storage region it is important to ensure suﬃcient shielding of
the storage pixels from any (stray)light, e.g. by attaching an external mask to the
CCD chip and by employing relay imaging as shown in Figure 3-5 to generate sharp52

black borders around the exposure region.
Several manufacturers oﬀer suitable camera systems meeting the discussed criteria.
The experiments reported in this thesis were performed with Princeton Instruments’
PIXIS: 1024BR back-illuminated CCD camera. At 671 nm this thermoelectricallycooled detector provides about 90 percent quantum eﬃciency, its 1024 × 1024 pixels
measure 13 × 13 μm, the fastest vertical shift time is 3.2 μs per row and the read noiseis speciﬁed to be 3.6 electrons rms at 100 kHz readout speed / 16-bit ADU resolution
with a conversion gain of one ADU per electron.
Detector noise calibration
For quantitative atom noise measurements it is very important to independently verify
the relevant detector parameters, in particular the values for the conversion gain cand the readout noise r. This is accomplished by acquiring a series of images undertypical atom noise measurement timing conditions but without atoms present, i.e.
the S1 = P W A − DF and S2 = P W OA − DF images will look alike. Subsequently
a diﬀerence image Sdiﬀ = S1 − S2 is generated14 and within a central subregion of
pixels with mean signal S = S1 = S2 the statistical variance Var(Sdiﬀ ) is measured.
From the previous discussion of the various noise components and by the law of total
variance one expects

Var(Sdiﬀ ) = 2 S c + 4 (rc)2 ,(3.18)

which suggests that c and r can be determined from a linear ﬁt to a plot of Var(Sdiﬀ )vs. S that samples diﬀerent mean signal levels S. Figure 3-7 presents such a plot
derived from 274 atom-free image pairs yielding values of c = 1.07 ± 0.005 ADU/e−and r = 3.45 ± 0.3 e− in good agreement with the quoted data sheet speciﬁcations.
Note that the above camera noise calibration is carried out in a ”horizontal”
fashion, i.e. the variance is determined from many pixels within one diﬀerence image
14

Typically a slight scaling correction is applied to S2 in order to compensate for residual intensity
ﬂuctuations between the two exposures.

53

Var (Sdiff )_S

Figure 3-7: Detector noise calibration ﬁt. The measured dependence of detector
diﬀerence-signal variance on average signal level makes it possible to determine via
equation (3.18) the camera conversion gain c and the read noise r. Each diﬀerence
image Sdiﬀ delivers one variance data point and the 274 contributing images were
either obtained with low, medium or high illumination intensity.

and not ”vertically” for one pixel across many images. Subtracting instead of dividing
S1 and S2 ensures correct statistics even if the pixels in the analysis subregion are
not uniformly illuminated.
Fast atom depumping
With the very short time span between the exposures for the P W A and P W OA
images (to minimize normalization imperfections) the removal of atoms from the detector ﬁeld of view after the ﬁrst exposure becomes a nontrivial problem. In standard
imaging setups hundreds of milliseconds between the two exposures mean that withtraps being switched oﬀ the atoms can simply disappear by falling down in gravity.
Oppositely, within the short FK interval of just 450 μs any ”mechanical” displacement
will not suﬃce to timely remove the atoms.
There are various other possibilities to clear the ﬁeld of view - all of them relyon the concept of making the atoms invisible by shifting the atom - light interaction
far away from resonance. This can for instance be achieved by quickly adjusting54

mJ = 3/2
mJ = 1/2
mJ = -1/2
Frequency shift [MHz]mJ = -3/2......

|6>|1>
Magnetic field [G]Figure 3-8: Zeeman splitting diagram of the 6 Li D2 line illustrating the optical
depumping scheme employed in combination with FK imaging. The spin mixtureof state |1 and |2 atoms is optically pumped (thin arrow) into the excited statemJ = 1/2 manifold. From there the atoms can decay (thick arrow) down to states |6
and |5. To achieve a symmetric pumping of the spin mixture components the pumping light frequency is tuned halfway between states |1 and |2. A higher pump beam
intensity compensates for the reduction in scattering rate. For typical experimental
parameters all atoms are depumped within 100 μs.

the imaging light frequency after the ﬁrst exposure so that the P W OA image is
obtained with light tuned hundreds of megahertz away from the atomic transition.
At this detuning the absorption by the expanded gas cloud is negligible and theacquired image appears atom-free. Practically this approach ﬁnds its limit in thefact that parasitic interference fringes themselves are by their very nature sensitive tofrequency changes; depending on the eﬀective ”interferometer length” even very small
detunings of tens of megahertz cause suﬃcient fringe shifts rendering the resulting
P W OA image useless for normalization purposes. Other methods like a suddenchange of the magnetic bias ﬁeld (to induce Zeeman shifts of the involved atomic
energy levels) or switching the handedness of the circularly polarized imaging light(with the opposite σ-transition being far away) do avoid the laser light detuning
55

complications but suﬀer from other shortcomings, e.g. mechanical vibrations inducedby sudden current changes in the bias ﬁeld coils or residual polarization asymmetries
in the imaging setup leading to normalization imperfections.
Instead of modifying various imaging parameters between the P W A and P W OA
acquisitions it is more advantageous to manipulate the atoms themselves by changing
their internal state via optical pumping. Figure 3-8 illustrates a possible depumping
scenario. At magnetic ﬁelds of a few hundred Gauss the excited 2P3/2 state in 6 Li is
split into four mJ manifolds, each containing three spectroscopically not resolved mI
states15 . The standard cycling imaging transition at these ﬁelds along the magnetic
ﬁeld lines connects the |1 and |2 ground states to the mJ = −3/2 excited state
manifold. Alternatively one could also drive transitions to the mJ = −1/2 andmJ = 1/2 manifolds but these transitions are not closed and will eventually pump
all atoms into the mJ = 1/2 ground state manifold, i.e. to states |6 and |5 asdepicted in Figure 3-8 for the mJ = 1/2 excited state case. By driving these pumping
transitions via an oﬀ-axis beam directly after the acquisition of the P W A image one
can therefore shuﬄe the state |1 and |2 atoms completely into states |6 and |5
where they are invisible (at 527G detuned by almost 2 GHz) with the original imaging
light. The subsequently under identical imaging conditions obtained P W OA image
will be atom-free but illuminated exactly like the P W A image guaranteeing a perfect
background normalization.

3.4.3

Further improvement strategies - Coherent vs. incoherent illumination

While the above described Fast Kinetics acquisition in combination with the optical
depumping scheme is able to reliably deliver clean photon shot noise limited density
images, various other measurement approaches and improvement strategies are worth
considering. Among them are the application of a counter propagating slowing beam
overlapped with the normal imaging beam to address the recoil induced Doppler
15

At high magnetic ﬁelds the I = 1 nuclear spin of the 6 Li atom is decoupled from the electron
and cannot be ﬂipped in an electric dipole transition.

56

detuning or attempts to actively ﬂatten the imaging beam proﬁle by scrambling the
spatial coherence of the illumination light.
Experimentally implemented the concept of a recoil balancing counter propagating
imaging beam proved successful when trying to partially recover lost optical density(cf. Figure 3-4), but corresponding improvements regarding the nonlinear fringe
imprint were eventually outweighed by stray light and back reﬂection issues thatare hardly avoidable when operating a counter propagating beam. Despite eventuallyalso not being implemented the coherence scrambling approach is worthy of discussion
because it is conceptually insightful and touches on the topic of laser speckle which
is of particular relevance for the next chapter.
Scrambling the spatial coherence of laser light with rotating diﬀusers
All the previously analyzed fringe issues would be absent if incoherent illumination
were used. Narrow-linewidth lasers achieve coherence lengths16 easily exceeding hundreds of meters making it diﬃcult to spatially decohere the light, but it is nevertheless possible to generate pseudo-incoherent illumination with a narrow-linewidthlaser source by rapidly time-averaging over many random interference patterns during a single exposure. A laser speckle pattern17 , being the prototype of a random
fragmented interference pattern, is the ideal starting point for such a procedure. Ina coherent imaging system full contrast laser speckle is encountered every time whenlarge scale phase ripples18 on a length scale smaller than the spatial resolution of thesystem get imprinted on the imaging light wavefront [48]. Accordingly, in the context of the imaging setup depicted in Figure 3-5 a speckle ﬁeld illuminating the atom
cloud can be created by placing a ground glass diﬀuser or another phase scrambling
element at the position of the iris diaphragm. Typical diﬀusers exhibit submicron
phase graininess well below the resolving power of the projection and imaging lenses
leading to a speckle pattern in the illumination light with a distribution of scale sizes
16
Depending on the particular deﬁnition of spectral width, coherence length Lc and laser linewidth
Δλ are in vacuum related via Lc = (2 ln 2/π) (λ2 /Δλ) for a Gaussian frequency spectrum with Δλmeasured as FWHM width.
17
Chapter 4 will discuss laser speckle in more detail.
18
phase excursions by more than 2π

57

(A)

(B)

(D)

(C)

(E)

Figure 3-9: Atom cloud imaging with incoherent illumination. Placing a static groundglass diﬀuser into the coherent illumination beam generates a speckle pattern in theobservation plane (A). Setting the diﬀuser disk into motion causes the speckle pattern
to move during the exposure interval and the camera records a time-averaged image(B). Further ﬂattening is achieved by employing a two-diﬀuser conﬁguration with one
static and one rotating diﬀuser (C). Example absorption images of a trapped cloudof sodium atoms illustrate the diﬀerences between coherent (D) and incoherent (E)illumination.

ranging from large-scale-size ﬂuctuations down to a small-size cutoﬀ given by the resolving power of the projection/imaging system. Figure 3-9 shows with picture (A) araw P W OA image acquired with such a diﬀuser in place. The irradiance of diﬀerent
pixels covers the full range from maximum intensity down to zero and is expected toobey negative exponential statistics [48].
In order to randomize and ﬂatten this illumination ﬁeld one can now dynamicallychange the imprinted phase ripple (and with it the resulting intensity speckle pattern)58

by constantly rotating the diﬀuser disk during the exposure interval. This procedure
delivers raw images similar to picture (B). While the full scale contrast of picture(A) is greatly reduced through the averaging process, the image is still not photon
shot noise limited and shows residual streak patterns from the diﬀuser rotation. Morequantitatively, the attainable speckle contrast reduction ratio [49] for a single rotating
diﬀuser is given by ΔJ/J =

L0 /X, where J denotes the mean of the observed

illuminance and X is the total displacement of the diﬀuser during the exposure interval. L0 quantiﬁes the image speckle autocorrelation radius, i.e. the typical size ofa speckle grain in the image plane, which approximately equals the resolving powerof the imaging system, so that L0 = λ/(2 N A) with illumination light wavelength λand imaging setup numerical aperture N A. In short, the ratio N = X/L0 measures
the number of independent speckle patterns contributing to the averaging within a√single exposure and consequently one ﬁnds ΔJ/J = 1/ N .
To further improve the illuminance ﬂatness one could increase N by simply rotating the diﬀuser at a higher speed, but more eﬃciently N is increased by adding asecond stationary diﬀuser directly before the moving diﬀuser. In this conﬁguration
the diﬀuser displacement necessary to regenerate an independent speckle pattern is
not anymore set by L0 but rather given by the diﬀuser’s phase graininess correlation length19 L which is for ground glass typically on the order of a few hundred
nm and therefore by about an order of magnitude smaller than L0 . Furthermore, forthe two diﬀuser conﬁguration ΔJ/J =

L/X does not anymore depend on opticalparameters of the imaging system, but only on the diﬀuser’s microscopic properties.
Raw image (C) in Figure 3-9 illustrates the signiﬁcant improvement in illuminanceﬂatness compared to image (B); the diﬀuser rotation speed and exposure time wasunchanged between both images, only a second stationary diﬀuser was added. Picture(E) of the same ﬁgure shows an absorption image of a trapped sodium gas cloud obtained with the two-diﬀuser setup; the comparison with a standard absorption image(D) of a similar cloud reveals the fringe suppression qualities of incoherent illumi19

This is a sensible result: The compound diﬀuser establishes a new random phase pattern once
the individual diﬀusers are displaced by more than L relative to each other.

59

nation. Additionally there are other more subtle diﬀerences between coherent and(pseudo)incoherent illumination (regarding theoretical resolving power, phase object
response, spectral broadening etc.) that are discussed in detail in reference [48]. Someof these side eﬀects, the reliability and cleanliness of the Fast Kinetics acquisition, mechanical complications accompanying high-speed diﬀuser rotation and the enormous
intensity loss due to two diﬀusers led eventually to the continued use of coherent
illumination for the experiments discussed in this thesis.

3.4.4

Depth of ﬁeld considerations

Microscopic imaging is usually idealized as a 2D to 2D mapping process with an object
plane and a correspondingly chosen in-focus image plane. Typically the assumptionof a ﬂat thin object is experimentally not met and the axial (along the optical axis)
resolving power, i.e. the depth of ﬁeld (DOF ) of the imaging system becomes aconcern. Analogously to the lateral resolution the axial resolution is determined by
the numerical aperture (N A) of the imaging objective lens. This is most easily seen
by revisiting the concepts of Gaussian beam optics20 . Starting from a beam with awaist radius W0 equivalent to the intended lateral in-focus resolution one ﬁnds [47]for the axial range over which the beam does not diverge by more then a factor of√
2 the expression

2z0 =

2πW02
,
λ

(3.19)

where z0 is the so-called Rayleigh range of the Gaussian beam and λ denotes theillumination light wavelength. To resolve a beam waist W0 it is necessary to employ
a focusing lens with a numerical aperture satisfying W0 ≈ λ/(π N A) and therefore
a laterally fully utilized numerical aperture is associated with a maximum depth ofﬁeld (ignoring prefactors of order 1) of
20

For a detailed understanding of the 3D resolving power one could alternatively analyze the outof-focus size of an Airy diﬀraction disk but for the purpose of obtaining insightful scaling relations
it is suﬃcient to refer to the properties of Gaussian beams.

60

DOF ≈ 2z0 ≈

λ
.
N A2

(3.20)

In contrast the aforementioned lateral resolution for the given N A scales like
2W0 ≈

λ
.
NA

(3.21)

Since the diﬀraction-limited depth of ﬁeld shrinks inversely with the square of thenumerical aperture it is obvious that the lateral noise analysis resolution (i.e. the lateral column bin size) must be chosen carefully such that the corresponding depth ofﬁeld is compatible with the axial atom sample thickness; otherwise one atom would
signal-wise contribute to several neighboring bins falsifying the counting statistics.
For instance, from the above relations a 1 mm thick sample roughly requires a lateral resolution of not better than 25 μm to avoid signiﬁcant counting bin crosstalk.
A systematic experimental study reported in the following sections conﬁrmed theseestimates.
It is worth noting that an in-depth three-dimensional diﬀraction analysis [46] of
the imaging system would reveal that lateral resolution and depth of ﬁeld are also
aﬀected by the numerical aperture of the illumination and the degree of coherence.
These more subtle eﬀects cause typically small corrections up to a factor of 2 and are
therefore not considered in detail.

3.5

Data acquisition and analysis

Under ideal conditions it is possible to distinguish by eye an image with increased
atom noise from an image containing very little noise, but normally the noise extraction from a series of images is a rather involved process that is carried out via
computer following a speciﬁcally programmed procedure. The next paragraphs will
discuss this procedure and related aspects.

613.5.1

Horizontal statistics vs. vertical stack analysis

Having iteratively acquired many images of Fermi gas clouds prepared under identicalconditions there are naturally two options to perform a noise analysis. As mentioned
before one can either compare pixels of the same average optical density within asingle image (horizontal analysis) or do counting statistics along diﬀerent images forthe same pixel or super-pixel bin (vertical analysis). While both approaches havespeciﬁc advantages and disadvantages, it turns out that the vertical stack procedure
is more versatile and delivers more consistent results.
The most severe shortcoming of the horizontal approach is the mixed analysisof spatially separated pixel regions. Even with a careful grouping of equivalent OD
pixels it is notoriously diﬃcult to minimize systematic OD variations that lead to abroadening in the OD distributions. Furthermore, the number of contributing pixels
for each OD group is very limited (depending on total cloud size and pixel binning)and one loses the ability to directly generate a full 2D noise proﬁle of the atom cloud.
Nevertheless, this comparison leads to a more general interpretation of the noise
extraction process along the lines of of a spatial frequency Fourier image analysis.
Fourier noise analysis
Any two-dimensional number array can be Fourier decomposed into contributions
from periodic functions of various spatial frequencies. Given the standard expression
for the Fourier transform F of the input function f 

F (νx , νy ) =f (x, y) exp[2πı (νx x + νy y)] dxdy ,(3.22)F (νx , νy ) exp[−2πı (νx x + νy y)] dνx dνy(3.23)

the Fourier decomposition reads 

f (x, y) =and can be adapted to a discrete array by replacing the integrals with appropriate
62

Power (arb unit s)

(a)
200
100
0

0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1

k / kF
(b)

(c)

-1

k y / kF
0
1
-1

0

1

k x / kF

Figure 3-10: Radially averaged power spectra of optical density images for hot (solidline) and cold (dashed line) samples (a). Power spectrum of cold sample (b). Power
spectrum of hot sample (c). A constant oﬀset is added to the power spectrum for the
hot sample to equalize the levels of photon shot noise. Each spectrum is obtained byaveraging over 50 raw images.

sums. Special algorithms of the FFT (Fast Fourier Transform) type make it possible
to eﬃciently compute the discrete Fourier transform. The so obtained power spectrum |F (νx , νy )| 2 contains all relevant atom noise information - to some extent it is
the physically most insightful representation of the atom noise because the spatial
frequency can be plotted in units of the Fermi wave vector21 .
In practice however, the raw spectrum of a single absorption image is not very
clean due to a limited signal-to-noise ratio and low frequency contributions from thegas cloud envelope proﬁle. Averaging the noise spectra of many individual images
and high-passing can alleviate these eﬀects. Figure 3-10 shows typical results of sucha procedure for cold (T = 0.2 TF ) and hot (T = 0.6 TF ) Fermi gas clouds.
21

For spatial frequencies well above the Fermi wave vector kF one would not expect to observe
noise suppression due to Fermi statistics since the corresponding resolution element becomes smaller
than the Fermi wavelength. In other words a momentum transfer above 2h̄kF to any particle will
not be Pauli suppressed by occupation of the ﬁnal state. For this limit one would expect to measure
the full Poissonian localization noise.

63

Because the Fourier transform of uncorrelated ﬂuctuations is ﬂat, the deviationfrom ﬂatness of the density noise corresponds to blurring induced by the imaging
system, barring the central peak corresponding to the shape of the cloud. For wave
vectors k much larger than the resolution limit of the detection scheme, the atom
number ﬂuctuations are no longer imaged, and the power spectrum is the photon
shot noise. For this experiment this happens for k < kF . Comparison of the power
spectra for the cold and the hot cloud shows, at small values of k, a 50 percent
suppression, consistent with the later results obtained using spatial bins in verticalstacks. If the imaging system still had contrast at k > 2kF , one would expect theratio of the power spectra to approach unity, since momentum transfer h̄k > 2h̄kF toa Fermi cloud has negligible Pauli suppression.
In the language of this frequency-resolved horizontal analysis, the vertical stackapproach appears as a localized band-passed version of the full noise spectroscopy
with the high frequency cutoﬀ set by the axial bin size and the low frequency roll-oﬀ
deﬁned by the cloud envelope proﬁle subtraction process. The next paragraph will
provide a systematic outline of the vertical noise extraction procedure.

3.5.2

The vertical noise measurement procedure

The noise extraction process is comprised of several steps:
1. Acquisition of 50 - 100 high-quality resonant optical density (OD) images of
expanded Fermi gas clouds under identical conditions.
2. Automatic and manual preselection of images to eliminate outliers regarding
imaging light intensity, total atom number and background ﬂatness.
3. Optional software binning to create super-pixels (2x2, 3x3 etc.)from thehardware-wise deﬁned elementary pixels.
4. Generation of an average S2  = P W OA − DF  image and an average ODimage for photon shot noise subtraction purposes.
5. Fitting a two-dimensional Gaussian envelope to each atom cloud image.
64

(a)

Atom
count

(b)

(c)

4000
0

N
(∆N)2
Hot

Cold

Figure 3-11: Comparison of density images to variance images. For Poissonian ﬂuctuations, the two images at a given temperature should be identical. The varianceimages were obtained by determining the local density ﬂuctuations from a set of 85
images taken under identical conditions. (a) Two dimensional image of the opticaldensity of an ideal Fermi gas after 7 ms of ballistic expansion. The noise data weretaken by limiting the ﬁeld of view to the dashed region of interest, allowing for faster
image acquisition. (b) For the heated sample with T = 0.6 TF , variance and density
pictures are almost identical, implying only modest deviation from Poissonian statistics. (c) Fermi suppression of density ﬂuctuations deep in the quantum degenerate
regime at T = 0.2 TF manifests itself through the diﬀerence between density andvariance picture. Especially in the center of the cloud, there is a large suppression ofdensity ﬂuctuations. The variance images were smoothed over 6 × 6 bins. The widthof images (b) and (c) is 2 mm.

6. Further high-pass ﬁltering of the ﬁt residual by applying a square matrix averaging ﬁlter. The matrix size is appropriately chosen so that only long-range lowfrequency features are removed; the pixel-to-pixel ﬂuctuations are preserved.
7. Computing the vertical variance (Δ OD)2 for each (super-)pixel along all preselected images.
8. Via the knowledge of S2  and OD computation (cf. equation (3.12)) of
the expected amount of optical density photon shot noise (Δph OD)2 that iscontained in the measured (Δ OD)2 matrix.
9. Subtraction of the detector readout noise augmented (Δph OD)2 from (Δ OD)2
to obtain the ﬁnal atom noise variance image (Δatom OD)2 .

65

As already mentioned due to its local character this scheme turned out to deliver
the most reliable and consistent measurements. Results obtained for a cold vs. hot
Fermi gas cloud are displayed in Figure 3-11. Cold and hot samples were preparedwith similar cloud sizes and central optical densities to ensure that they were imaged
with the same eﬀective absorption cross section and resolution. The cold cloud showsa distinct suppression of the atom number variance, especially in the center of thecloud where the local T /TF is smallest. In the given example the individual probe
volumes (super-pixel columns), in which the numbers of atoms are counted, are chosen
to be 26 μm in the transverse directions, and extend through the entire cloud in the
direction of the line of sight (cf. above depth of ﬁeld discussion).

3.5.3

Scattering cross section calibration

While Figure 3-11 seamlessly seemed to make the transition from optical densities
to actual atom numbers per counting bin, this conversion is a crucial step towards
obtaining quantitative results. From the context of equations (3.5) and (3.15) it isclear that for an absorption cross section σ0 the atom content of a pixel column oftransverse area A and optical density OD is given by

N=

A
OD
σ0

with ﬂuctuations

ΔN =

A
ΔOD .
σ0

(3.24)For the employed cycling transition at imaging wavelength λ the theoretical lowintensity resonant absorption cross section [42] is

σ0 =

3 2
λ ,
2π

(3.25)

but even when taking higher-intensity nonlinear corrections into account this value isexperimentally rarely achieved. From the measurements reported in Figure 3-4 one
can empirically infer at the chosen probe light intensity a 20 % reduction of the crosssection compared to its low-probe-intensity limit. For λ = 671 nm this leads to a66

At om number variance

4000

2000

0
0

2000

4000

Atom number
Figure 3-12: Atom number variance vs. average atom number. For each spatial
position, the average atom number per bin and its variance were determined using 85
images. The ﬁlled and open circles in the ﬁgure are averages of diﬀerent spatial bin
positions with similar average atom number. For a hot cloud at T /TF = 0.6 (ﬁlled
circles), the atom number variance is equal to the average atom number (dotted
line, full Poissonian noise) in the spatial wings where the atom number is low. The
deviation from the linear slope for a cold cloud at T /TF = 0.21 (open circles) is due
to Pauli suppression of density ﬂuctuations. There is also some suppression at thecenter of the hot cloud, where the atom number is high. The solid and dashed lines
are quadratic ﬁts for the hot and cold clouds to guide the eye.

value of σ0 = 1.71 × 10−13 m2 . This is an upper limit to the cross section due toimperfections in polarization and residual line broadening.
An independent estimate of the eﬀective cross section of 1.48 × 10−13 m2 was
obtained by comparing the over the whole cloud integrated optical density to thenumber of fermions necessary to ﬁll up the trap to the chemical potential. With
known trap parameters the value of the chemical potential was obtained from ﬁts
to the ballistic expansion pictures that allowed independent determination of theabsolute temperature and the fugacity of the gas [50]. The eﬀects of a not fully
characterized weak residual magnetic ﬁeld curvature on trapping and on the ballistic
expansion made it diﬃcult to precisely assess the accuracy of this value of the crosssection.
The most accurate value for the eﬀective cross section was determined from theobserved atom shot noise itself. Instead of displaying the noise measurement results
in a spatially resolved fashion one can alternatively re-sort data points such that the
number variance of each vertical bin stack is plotted against its mean atom number.
67

At om number variance

5000

0

0

Position (bins)

100

Figure 3-13: Determination of proﬁles of the atom number variance for a cold Fermi
gas cloud. For each bin, the total photon count is determined, and its contribution(red) to the total variance of the optical density (blue) is subtracted. The obtained
atom number variance (green) is compared to the average atom number (black).
The displayed trace reveals 50 % noise suppression in the center of the cloud. The
apparently high suppression of atom variation in the wings is a statistical ﬂuctuation.
Figure 3-12 shows that the suppression is monotonic in atomic density.

Figure 3-12 shows the processed outcome of such a strategy. The atom shot noise in
the wings of the hottest cloud must be Poissonian, i.e. (ΔN )2 = N , and this condition
together with equation (3.24) determines the absorption cross section. Requiring thatthe slope of variance of the atom number (ΔN )2 vs. atom number N is unity results
in a value of (1.50 ± 0.12) × 10−13 m2 for the eﬀective cross section in good agreementwith the two above estimates.

3.6

Measurement results and interpretation

3.6.1

Comparison of theory and experiment

Given the theoretical insight developed in chapter 2 one can compare the experimentalﬁndings with the theoretical predictions for a noninteracting Fermi gas. The com68(∆N) 2 /1000
5 (a)

0

0

(b)

(c)

100
Position (bins)

Figure 3-14: Comparison of observed variances (black dots) with a theoretical model(black line) and the observed atom number (gray), at three diﬀerent temperatures (a,b, and c), showing 50, 40, and 15 % suppression. Noise thermometry is implemented
by ﬁtting the observed ﬂuctuations, resulting in temperatures T /TF of 0.23 ± 0.01,
0.33 ± 0.02, and 0.60 ± 0.02. This is in good agreement with temperatures 0.21 ± 0.01,
0.31±0.01, and 0.6±0.1 obtained by ﬁtting the shape of the expanded cloud [50]. The
quoted uncertainties correspond to one standard deviation and are purely statistical.

parison is simpliﬁed by ﬁrst averaging the measured two-dimensional noise proﬁles(see Figure 3-11) along the short axis of the images. Using one-dimensional proﬁles
obtained by such averaging Figure 3-13 further illustrates the previously delineatednoise extraction process by explicitly showing the contributions of photon and atom
number variance to the overall noise in optical density.
Noise thermometry
With known trap parameters and employing the results from chapter 2, in particularequation (2.19) together with the local density approximation, it is straightforward
to numerically generate theoretical 1D proﬁles of the noise variance for a gas cloud ofknown temperature. Figure 3-14 presents the comparison of theory and experiment
for three diﬀerent temperatures. Given that the observation of density ﬂuctuations
determines the product of temperature and compressibility (see equation (2.7)), it provides an absolute thermometer as demonstrated in Figure 3-14, if the compressibility
is known or is experimentally otherwise determined. Because variance is proportional
to temperature for T  TF as seen in equation (2.20), noise thermometry maintains
its sensitivity at very low temperature, in contrast to the standard technique of ﬁt69

1

Var(N) / N

0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0

0

10

20

30

40

Bin size (μm)
Figure 3-15: Observed atom number variance versus bin size for heated (dashed line)
and cold (solid line) Fermi gas samples, normalized to 1 for Poissonian statistics. A
plateau is reached when the blurring of the bins due to ﬁnite optical resolution is
negligible.

ting spatial proﬁles. The good agreement between theory and experiment as foundin Figure 3-14 underlines the practical relevance of this thermometry method.

3.6.2

Atom counting contrast saturation

One very essential aspect of the imaging system that has already been touched uponin the context of depth of ﬁeld considerations (cf. equation (3.20)) is to choose
appropriate lateral and axial resolutions. Without matching these to the sample size,
the blurring of adjacent pixel columns (probe bins) due to ﬁnite optical resolution
could eﬀectively decrease the measured atom number variance. This eﬀect is avoided
by binning the noise data using a suﬃciently large bin size. Experimentally thisminimum size is determined by varying the probe bin size (software binning) andverifying that the measured relative atom noise becomes independent from the probe
bin dimensions, i.e. saturates from a certain bin size on. Figure 3-15 presents the70

At om number variance

(a)

(b)

6000

6000

4000

4000

2000

2000

0

0

0

2000

4000

0

Atom number

2000

4000

Atom number

Figure 3-16: Atom number variance vs. atom number. (a) Data for all of the resolution elements is plotted. Red points are from the hot cloud at T /TF = 0.6, blue
points from the cold cloud at T /TF = 0.21. There is signiﬁcant scatter in the variance data, and there are many ”cold” pixels which actually have higher variancethan their corresponding ”hot” pixel. (b) The red and blue shaded regions indicate
the expected 2σ scatter in sample variance that is expected due to atom and photon counting statistics. The large circles are variance data averaged over pixels withsimilar atom number for the hot (red) and cold (blue) cloud. The bars show themeasured 2σ scatter of the data points. The measured scatter agrees very well withthe expected scatter, indicating that the scatter of the data is fully accounted forby counting statistics. Negative values of the observed atom number variance result
from the subtraction of photon shot noise.

outcome of such a measurement and conﬁrms that the saturation plateau is roughly
reached for probe bins larger than 25 μm.

3.6.3

Noise in the noise

Noise measurements are subject to error bars. Besides the discussed systematic eﬀects
like nonlinear bleaching these errors are associated with ﬁnite statistical sampling of
the quantity of interest, i.e. determining the variance of a variable via a ﬁnite numberof data points leads to a statistical measurement uncertainty for the variance itself.
Figure 3-16 is the raw version of Figure 3-12 and further illustrates the scatter ofthe measured atom number variance. This scatter is not primarily due to technicalnoise, but instead a statistical property of the sampling distribution of the variance.
The shaded areas are derived from theoretical values for the variance of the sample
71variance. This is given by

Var(Var(N )) =(m − 1)(m − 3) 2
(m − 1)2
μ4 −
μ2 ,
m3
m3

(3.26)

where m is the number of observations in each sample [51]. The moments μ2 and μ4
are the central moments of the population distribution. For a Poisson distribution,
μ2 = N  and μ4 = N (1 + 3N ), and for m, N   1, this expression reduces to2N 2 /m. Figure 3-16 (b) shows the comparison between the expected and measured
variance in the sample variance. While other minor eﬀects might contribute to theerror budget it is clear from these results that counting statistics is mostly responsible
for the scatter of the variance data points.
In conclusion, this chapter reported on the successful observation of suppressed
density ﬂuctuations in a quantum degenerate Fermi gas. A sensitive technique fordetermining atomic shot noise has been established. Parallel research performed by
the ETH group in Zurich led to similar results as presented in [52, 53].
The next chapter describes further progress towards the adaption of the noise
measurement technique to the in situ study of strongly interacting Fermi gases along
the BEC-BCS crossover.

72

Chapter 4
Measuring ﬂuctuations in astrongly interacting Fermi gas
This chapter focuses on the experiment reported in the following publication: C. Sanner, E. J. Su, A. Keshet, W. Huang, J. Gillen, R. Gommers, and W. Ketterle,“Speckle Imaging of Spin Fluctuations in a Strongly Interacting Fermi Gas”. Included in Appendix B.

Given the previous chapter’s results on quantitative noise measurements in noninteracting Fermi gases it is promising to generalize this approach and apply it to a broader
range of quantum gases. This chapter introduces the technique of speckle imaging
as a simple and highly sensitive in situ method to characterize ﬂuctuations. Using speckle imaging the susceptibility and compressibility of a two-component Fermi
gas are studied across the BEC-BCS crossover. Fluctuations in the magnetization,i.e., the diﬀerence of the densities in the two diﬀerent spin components, are directly
measured, bypassing the need to measure the individual densities separately.

73

4.1

Properties of an interacting two component
Fermi gasWith the onset of interactions a rich set of new phenomena can be observed in an
ultracold Fermi gas. The underlying physics of Feshbach resonances and the BECBCS crossover have been discussed extensively in numerous publications [36, 54].
Therefore, instead of detailing the relevant derivations, only the main conceptual
steps that lead to a theoretical understanding of the interacting gas are sketched intable form and then an oversimpliﬁed but very intuitive physical picture of a Fermi
gas in the unitary limit [55] is presented.

4.1.1

From elastic collisions to Feshbach resonances

The natural starting point to understand the interacting gas is the corresponding
two-body problem:
1) At large enough distances the interaction between the two particles of mass
m is approximately described by a position-dependent van der Waals potential
V (r) ≈ −C6 /r6 . The quantum mechanical range b of this potential is deﬁned
with the corresponding wave vector via h̄2 /(mb2 ) = C6 /b6 . Only low-energy
scattering with relative momentum k  b−1 is considered.
2) The scattering amplitude fk for elastic collisions in the center-of-mass frame of
the two atoms is obtained by solving the Schrödinger equation
Eφ = [−h̄2 /m Δr + V (r)] φ .

(4.1)

Scattering eigenstates with positive energies E = h̄2 k02 /m are written as φ =φ0 + φs with the incoming plane wave φ0 = exp(ık0 · r) and the outgoingspherical wave φs ≈ fk0 (r/r) exp(ık0 r)/r. Assuming that the potential scattersonly in the s-wave the scattering amplitude is isotropic, i.e. fk0 (r/r) = fk0 .

743) With the optical theorem [56] it follows that |fk0 | 2 = k0−1 Imfk0 and therefore1
fk0 = −

1s(k0 ) + ık0(4.2)

with s(k0 ) being a real and even function of k0 .
4) Via the low-k expansion1
fk0 = − −1
a + ık0 − k02 re /2 + ...

(4.3)

the scattering amplitude is parametrized by the scattering length a and theeﬀective range re . In the zero-range limit, i.e. for k 2 |re |  |a−1 + ık| the scattering amplitude is solely characterized by the scattering length2 . Furthermore,
for re  1/k and k|a|  1 the gas enters the unitary limit with fk0 = ı/k.
5) To further explain Feshbach-type resonance eﬀects the atom-atom interaction ismore speciﬁcally modeled as an interaction via two potential curves, a so-called
open channel potential Vopen (r) and a closed channel potential Vclosed (r). For
alkali atoms with one valence electron, Vopen (r) corresponds to the electronic
triplet conﬁguration and Vclosed (r) to the spin singlet. A weak coupling between
the two channels makes it possible that ”incoming” atoms in the open channel
are resonantly aﬀected by closed channel bound states if the energy diﬀerence is
suﬃciently small. Due to the diﬀerent magnetic moments of singlet and triplet
states this energy diﬀerence can be tuned over a wide range, i.e. the scattering
length can simply be adjusted by an external magnetic bias ﬁeld.

4.1.2

A Fermi gas in the unitary limit

With the continuous tunability of the scattering length via a Feshbach resonance it
is straightforward to prepare a Fermi gas in the unitary limit and study its behavior
1

Note that −Im(z)/|z|2 = Im(1/z) for any complex number z.
Typical experiments with cold atoms in the vicinity of broad Feshbach resonances fulﬁll re ≈ b
and are therefore in the zero-range limit.
275

on both sides of the resonance. Despite all diﬃculties arising from the lack of an
appropriate small parameter for kF |a| → ∞ many theoretical studies3 have developed
a detailed quantitative understanding of the relevant many-body physics, but in thiscontext it is more insightful to follow a qualitative model as described by Pricoupenko
and Castin in [55].
Consider a homogeneous ultracold gas of N fermions of mass m, half of themin the spin-up ↑ state, the other half in spin-down ↓ conﬁguration. Heuristicallythis many-body system is modeled by constructing a pseudo-equivalent two-bodyproblem for each ↑ atom such that the nearest ↓ neighbor interaction is described via
the standard4 Fermi δ pseudopotential

V (r) =

4πh̄2 aδ(r) ∂r (r·) .
m

(4.4)

In a center-of-mass frame this scenario translates into a ﬁctitious ↑ particle of reduced
mass m/2 interacting with a ﬁxed δ scatterer at the origin. To mimic the Fermi
statistical eﬀect of the other ↑ atoms a boundary condition is imposed so that thewave function φ(r) of the ﬁctitious particle vanishes on the surface of a sphere of radius
R. The appropriate value for R can be obtained by comparing the total energy ofthe noninteracting gas E = (3/5) N F to the zero point energy 0 = (h̄2 π 2 )/(m R2 )of the ↑ atoms conﬁned in spheres of radius R, i.e. E = 0 N/2. This leads tokF R = π

5/3 ,

(4.5)

which is a sensible calibration for R given that kF R should be of order 1 if R is thecharacteristic extent of a single atom volume.
3see [54] and references therein
As discussed in the previous paragraph, the scattering problem is within certain limits suﬃciently
described by a scattering amplitude of form (4.3), i.e. any interaction potential leading to thisscattering amplitude can be deployed to characterize the atom-atom scattering. The particular formof the regularized delta pseudopotential ensures mathematical ease. References [57, 58, 59] provide
an in-depth discussion of various analogous model potentials.
476Energy / atom (EF)

2
1
0
-1
-2
10

BEC

BCS

0
5
-5
Interaction parameter (1/kFa)-10

Figure 4-1: Energy spectrum of an interacting Fermi gas as derived from a simple twobody model. Only the two lowest-lying branches are shown. Three-body collisions
depopulate the upper branch and lead to the formation of bound atom pairs. Adaptedfrom [55].

To solve the so deﬁned simple Fermi gas model it is advantageous to not directly
insert the potential (4.4) into the Schrödinger equation. Instead, as shown in [59, 60]
one can equivalently introduce the contact condition∂r (rφ)= −1/a
r→0
rφ
lim

(4.6)

and start from the s-wave restricted free Schrödinger equation which is solved by
the ﬁrst spherical Bessel function so that its positive energy  = h̄2 k 2 /m solutions
scale like r φ(r) ∝ sin k(r − R) and its negative energy  = −h̄2 κ2 /m solutions follow
r φ(r) ∝ sinh κ(r − R). Imposing condition (4.6) on these solutions leads totan kR = kaandtanh κR = κa ,(4.7)

respectively. Together with equation (4.5) this determines the energy spectrum of
the gas as depicted in Figure 4-1 for the two lowest-energy branches. In the limit
77

of weak interactions, i.e. for |1/(kF a)|  1, the total energy approaches the value
E/N = (3/5) F as expected for the noninteracting gas. Concentrating on the groundstate branch the model predicts two diﬀerent regimes: Below the Feshbach resonance(for a > 0) a two-body bound state emerges with binding energy −h̄2 /(ma2 ). The
atom pair extent is typically on the order of the scattering length a, and at low enoughtemperatures these bosonic dimers can form a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC). In
the opposite regime for a < 0 the system becomes an attractive Fermi gas and amore detailed analysis expects for suﬃciently low temperatures the transition to asuperﬂuid BCS state [36, 61].
Right on the Feshbach resonance, i.e. for 1/(kF a) = 0, the model predicts nodramatic changes - a smooth transition connects the BCS side to the BEC limit andon resonance the total energy of the gas is smaller than for the noninteracting system
indicating an eﬀective attraction due to the atomic interactions. In the unitary limitof diverging scattering length and saturated scattering amplitude all relevant scales
are set by the Fermi energy and derived quantities.
The second lowest branch in the energy spectrum plotted in Figure 4-1 corresponds
for 1/(kF a) → ∞ to a weakly interacting repulsive Fermi gas. Not being in the
ground-state the gas can decay via a three-body collision to the lowest branch byforming a dimer and ejecting a third atom carrying away the binding energy. This
dimer production by decay from the metastable upper branch, the condensation of
atom pairs to a Bose-Einstein condensate, the superﬂuidity of the unitary gas andthe smooth crossover from a BCS state to the BEC limit have all been observed
experimentally [62, 63, 64] and conﬁrm the qualitative insight obtained from thesimple toy model.

78

4.2

In-situ noise measurements - Advantages andchallenges

Noise measurements in interacting quantum gases are complicated by the non-ballistic
expansion of the gas when released from trap. Depending on the speciﬁc sample properties it is still possible to reconstruct insightful information from such measurements,
but in general it is desirable to adapt the previous chapter’s method to in-trap measurement scenarios. While an in-trap measurement has the obvious advantage of not
requiring any further potentially destructive manipulation of the atom sample, it isaccompanied by impractically high optical densities and various other resolution anddepth of ﬁeld constraints.
To address the problem of saturated high OD ”blacked out” absorption images one
can detune the imaging light frequency away from the atomic resonance so that thethe eﬀective scattering cross section is reduced according to equation (3.5). However,such a detuning does not only reduce the optical attenuation, it gives simultaneously
rise to dispersive eﬀects as described by equation (3.6), i.e. the trapped atom cloud
starts to act like an optical lens bending light rays away from the direction of incidence. For clouds signiﬁcantly thinner than the imaging system’s depth of ﬁeld
this eﬀect can be tolerated, but if the cloud thickness becomes comparable to theaxial resolution the additional ”residual lens” in the imaging system will noticeably
degrade the background normalization.
Instead of treating the dispersive response of the atoms as an unwanted side eﬀect
one can set up the imaging system such that dispersive phase shifts are turned into
intensity contrast signals on the detector. Popular methods to achieve this contrast
conversion are polarization contrast and phase contrast imaging as described below
in more detail.

79

4.2.1

A short review of Fourier optics

To further understand the various contrast enhancement methods and related aspectsof image formation it is instructive to review the basic concepts of Fourier optics.
Fourier optics is a continuation of the standard scalar wave theory of light5 . In agiven ”input” plane z = z0 on the optical axis the complex amplitude U (x, y, z0 ) of
the light ﬁeld of wavelength λ is Fourier decomposed into its plane wave superposition
components 

U (x, y, z0 ) =where kz =F (νx , νy ) exp[−2πı (νx x + νy y)] exp[−ıkz z0 ] dνx dνy ,

(4.8)



k 2 − kx2 − ky2 = 2π λ−2 − νx2 − νy2 is the z-component of the wavevector

k with the corresponding spatial frequencies νx and νy . The key concept of Fourier optics is now to predict the complex amplitude at a later ”output” plane z = z1 by individually propagating the plane waves through the optical system and then superposing
them to the new complex amplitude ﬁeld U (x, y, z1 ). Because wave equations are linear and the optical system is shift-invariant6 one can apply all principles known fromthe general theory of linear systems. In particular it is advantageous to characterize
the system by its transfer function H(νx , νy ); since an harmonic input function fν (x, y)
is expected to lead to an harmonic output function gν (x, y) = H(νx , νy ) fν (x, y) only
modiﬁed by a frequency-dependent complex prefactor, the system is fully describedby the explicit knowledge of H(νx , νy ).
For instance, for the case of free space propagation from z = 0 to z = d andassuming an harmonic input function f (x, y) = exp[−ı2π(νx x + νy y)] = exp[−ı(kx x +ky y + kz 0)] one ﬁnds with kz from above g(x, y) = exp[−ı(kx x + ky y + kz d)] for the
output function. Therefore the transfer function for free space propagation over a
5

Many optical phenomena do not require the full vector formulation of the electromagnetic theory of light. It is often suﬃcient to introduce a complex scalar wavefunction whose modulus is
proportional to the optical power density .
6Free space is invariant to displacement of the coordinate system.

80

distance d becomesH(νx , νy ) = g/f = exp[−ı2πd (1/λ2 − νx2 − νy2 )1/2 ] .

(4.9)

From this expression it is clear that for spatial frequencies fulﬁlling νx2 + νy2 ≤ 1/λ2
the incoming plane wave continues along its travel direction simply accumulating thecorresponding phase shift. However, for νx2 +νy2 > 1/λ2 the exponent in equation (4.9)
is real7 so that the traveling wave is attenuated during free space propagation thus
becoming an evanescent wave. This quantitatively conﬁrms the well-known conclusionthat structure information ﬁner than the wavelength λ cannot be transmitted beyond
the near ﬁeld.
Following the above example all components in an optical system can be assigned
to a speciﬁc transfer function making it possible to propagate an incoming beam stepby step through the system, not only providing a convenient procedure to analyze
wave optics problems, but often delivering additional physical insight from aspects
clearer seen in the frequency domain. An analysis of dispersive phase contrast imaging- to some extent a precursor of the later relevant speckle imaging - illustrates these
beneﬁts very well.

4.2.2

Dispersive imaging

For simplicity ﬁrst consider a two-dimensional phase object8 in the input plane ofa 4-f imaging system as depicted in Figure 4-2. The system forms a real inverted
1:1 image of the object in the output plane, however, a typical detector like a CCD
camera or the naked eye will only be sensitive to intensity variations so that a purephase object will stay invisible.
In this context the negative square root (−|x|)1/2 = −ı| |x|| is chosen.
8
An ideal phase object does not absorb any light, i.e. the imaginary part of its complex index
of refraction is zero, it only disperses and refracts the light as discussed in the context of equation(3.4).
781

Illumination

Fourier plane

1f

1f

1f

Image

1f

.

.

ObjectFigure 4-2: Layout of a 4-f imaging system. Two imaging lenses of focal length f ininﬁnite conjugate conﬁguration spaced two focal lengths apart generate a 1:1 imageof the input object in the output plane. Dotted lines represent rays of unscattered
light modeling object illumination by a large diameter collimated beam. The solid
blue lines trace rays of light scattered by the object. To obtain phase contrast imagesa λ/4 phase plate is positioned in the Fourier plane so that shifted and not shifted
light components interfere in the image plane with a relative phase shift of π/2.

Phase contrast imaging
One possibility to enable intensity contrast for a phase object in the above imaging
system is the introduction of a selective λ/4 phase shift for the DC component in
the spatial frequency spectrum of the light after passing through the atom sample.
Experimentally this can be achieved with a so-called phase plate placed in the Fourier
plane of the system. In a 4-f imaging conﬁguration the Fourier plane (2f away fromthe input plane) represents the optical Fourier transform9 of the input plane’s complex
amplitude distribution. The phase plate behaves essentially like a ﬂat piece of opticalglass, only that a small round region of typically a few hundred microns diameterin its center is slightly modiﬁed so that the optical path length there is reduced oradvanced by λ/4. Downstream in the image plane this leads to a situation where
recombined rays of phase shifted and unshifted light interfere with a corresponding
9This can be seen by systematically propagating the incoming light through free space and theﬁrst lens, but it is also made clear by considering how ray angles (i.e. wave vectors) are mapped topoints on the Fourier plane by the ﬁrst lens.

82

Δ E = (Δ E)DC + (Δ E)AC

E 0 e ιϕE0
E0

E 0 e −ιπ/2
(a)

(b)

(Δ E)DC e −ιπ/2

(c)
E pc

(Δ E)AC

Figure 4-3: Complex amplitude phasor diagram for phase contrast imaging. (a)The illuminating light ﬁeld is represented by an upright phasor E0 in the output
plane. (b) A pure phase object rotates the complex amplitude by an angle ϕ. (c)Insertion of a λ/4 phase plate in the Fourier plane causes a selective π/2 phase shift
for the spatial DC components of the light. This eﬀectively changes the length of theresulting output phasor Epc , turning the phase modulation in the object plane into an
intensity modulation in the image plane. Since phase contrast imaging is achieved via
a selective manipulation in the Fourier spectrum it critically relies on the separation of
spatial frequency scales for illumination and object structure. Diﬀerent colors group
arrows of the same lengths.

phase diﬀerence of π/2. Figure 4-3 further illustrates this with a phasor diagram
showing the complex amplitude (mappable to electric ﬁeld components) on the opticalaxis in the image plane for three diﬀerent conﬁgurations. In case (a) the input plane
is empty and no phase plate is in the system so that the upright input phasor E0 is
simply reproduced at the output plane10 .
Adding a pure phase object (i.e. no intensity attenuation) in the input plane causes
a relative rotation of the output phasor by an angle ϕ as depicted in (b). To later
anticipate the eﬀect of a phase plate it is helpful to decompose the rotated phasor into
10
This corresponds to the very deﬁnition of an imaging system: Rays from a point source in the
input plane are overlapped on a corresponding point in the output plane all having traveled thesame optical path length.

83

an unaltered E0 and an additional ΔE component (green arrow in Figure 4-3). ΔE isthen further decomposed into a DC / low spatial frequency component (ΔE)DC and ahigh frequency component (ΔE)AC . This distinction is important because the phase
plate in the Fourier plane will aﬀect these two components diﬀerently. Accordingly
a critical spatial frequency νDCAC exists that marks the transition between the twointervals. Higher spatial frequencies are in the Fourier plane located further awayfrom the optical axis (on which the phase spot is centered) and therefore the size ofthe phase spot determines νDCAC for a given lens system.
In practice the phase spot size is chosen such that it fully covers the (in the Fourier
plane refocused) unscattered illumination light, which means that upon insertion of
the phase plate the E0 and (ΔE)DC phasor components are being rotated by π/2,
whereas (ΔE)AC stays unaﬀected, as shown in Figure 4-3 (c). Overall the total phase
contrast complex amplitude in the output plane is then given by the phasor sum
Epc = E0 e−ıπ/2 + (ΔE)DC e−ıπ/2 + (ΔE)AC ,(4.10)

i.e. the ”invisible” phase shift ϕ has been turned into a phasor length change meaning
an intensity signal in the image plane.
By introducing an appropriate absorption prefactor the discussion so far can easily
be extended to include objects with a mixed dispersive and absorptive response. Thisapplies in particular to the case of two-level atom gas clouds as described in thecontext of equation (3.4).

4.2.3

Initial experimental strategy

Given the above considerations it appeared promising to realize noise measurements
for trapped quantum gases via the experimental implementation of phase contrast
imaging. The state |1 & |2 balanced spin mixture of 6 Li is for this method especially well suited because the optical absorption resonance for the two states is84

Im [n ref ]0.004

Re [n ref ] - 1

-25

25

75

50

100

125

Detuning [MHz]-0.002

Figure 4-4: Real (red curve) and imaginary part (blue curve) of the index of refraction nref of a noninteracting balanced 6 Li state |1 & |2 Fermi gas mixture as afunction of the probe laser detuning (with respect to the state |2 cycling resonance).
Linewidths and relative detuning of the two transitions match favorably so that laser
light centered between the resonances experiences no mean dispersion but becomessensitive to the relative number deviation of the two spin states. The plotted curves
are derived from equation (3.4) and assume typical shallow trap spin state densitiesof n = 5 × 1017 m−3 corresponding to a Fermi energy EF = h × 8.2 kHz.

roughly separated by 76 MHz at higher magnetic ﬁelds so that laser light11 parked at
the center frequency between the two resonances will not experience a mean dispersion (red and blue phase shift eﬀects from the two states cancel each other) and only
weak absorption (equal amounts from both states) as illustrated in Figure 4-4. Neutral average dispersion is a signiﬁcant advantage in several regards: First, oﬀset-freemeasurements are typically cleaner and more precise compared to ﬂuctuation measurements on top of large mean values. Second, since state |1 and |2 atoms cause
opposite phase shifts not only the mean phase shift is zero, but the phase contrast
signal will also be diﬀerential, i.e. directly access Δ(n1 − n2 ) with n1 and n2 being
the implicit individual spin component densities. Third, even a thicker (i.e. partiallyout of focus) gas cloud will not introduce the earlier mentioned ”residual lens” eﬀect,
which could otherwise cause severe background normalization issues. Furthermore, alltypes of dispersive imaging have the detuning-dependent advantage that they allow
11

The D2 transition of 6 Li has a width of Γ = 2π × 5.9 MHz, i.e. the symmetric 38 MHz intervals
correspond to a detuning of about 6 natural linewidths. Also see Figure 3-8.

85

for higher illumination intensities (at constant Rayleigh scattering rates, cf. equation(3.16)) compared to resonant absorption imaging.
However, experimental testing of the above considerations led to rather surprising
results with the main ﬁnding that symmetrically detuned noise measurements on
trapped balanced noninteracting Fermi gas mixtures resulted in very similar noise
values, whether performed as simple oﬀ-resonant absorption measurements (withouta phase plate) or as phase contrast measurements (with a phase plate). Following
the previous chapter’s procedure it turned out that the measured amount of noise
exceeded the expectation for absorption images (even when assuming full Poissonnoise) by more than a factor of ten. On the other hand the measured noise values
roughly corresponded to the anticipated phase contrast signal and hence it seemed asif there was a hidden contrast enhancement mechanism contributing to the nominallypure absorption signal. Further investigation eventually revealed that a phenomenon
conceptually similar to laser speckle plays a key role when trying to understand theexperimental observations. The next paragraph will therefore provide a short reviewof speckle phenomena in optics before explaining concrete details of ”speckle imaging”.

4.3

From laser speckle to speckle imaging

4.3.1

Laser speckle

With the advent of coherent laser light speckle phenomena became ubiquitous side
eﬀects in optical experiments. As such, speckle is often considered a hindrance andnot a feature. The well-known prototype laser speckle manifestation, the granularappearance of a laser beam when observed on an index card (see Figure 3-9 (A)),
illustrates the most important properties of laser speckle very well. First of all,speckle formation appears to require the illumination of a microscopically chaotic
and unordered optically rough object (paper, ground glass etc. are rough on thescale of an optical wavelength) with a highly coherent light source. Accordingly, astatistical description is necessary in order to properly model and explain speckle

86patterns.
Assuming an imaging geometry as depicted in Figure 4-2 (without phase plate),consider a coherently illuminated optically rough object in the input plane. One
can qualitatively understand speckle formation in the image plane as a result of therandom superposition of many individual point spread functions (PSFs) with diﬀerent
phases [48, 65]. More precisely, the light irradiance at a given point P  in the image
plane is geometrically mapped to the appropriate point P in the object plane, but due
to the ﬁnite aperture and resolution of the imaging system (with a correspondingly
sized PSF), light of diﬀerent phases from points close to P will partially also contributeto the irradiance at P  . This overlap of randomly phased PSFs around P  gives riseto irregular interference patterns also known as speckle patterns.
From this explanation it is clear that for the case of a focused imaging geometry
the object needs to exhibit phase ripples (with phase excursions exceeding 2π for fullcontrast) on length scales well beyond the resolution limit in order to cause speckledintensity ﬂuctuations in the image plane - larger size phase ﬂuctuations do not lead tointensity contrast because they do not generate overlapping PSFs of diﬀerent phases.
Furthermore this also implies that the scale size of the granularity in the speckle
pattern is cut oﬀ at a length scale corresponding to the numerical aperture of theimaging system.

4.3.2

Out-of-focus speckle

Instead of relying on the overlap of out-of-phase PSFs by means of their ﬁnite widths
as explained in the previous paragraph it is alternatively possible to achieve an analogous overlap by intentionally defocusing the imaging system as illustrated in the cartoon drawing in Figure 4-5. Assuming a thin homogeneously illuminated pure phaseobject with low-frequency phase ﬂuctuations (i.e. only on resolved length scales) one
expects that an in-focus imaging setup will produce a ﬂat output image without visible intensity ripple (upper illustration in Figure 4-5). However, once the system isdefocused the imaging condition is not fulﬁlled anymore, i.e. light rays of diﬀerent
optical path lengths are combined on the image plane so that the phase ﬂuctuations
87

Transmission image variance (arb. units)
0
0

2f

d

50

2f

100

150

Defocus distance d (μm)

Figure 4-5: Simulation of propagation eﬀects after light has passed through a Poissonian phase noise object. Shown are the variance measured in the amplitude (blackline) and the phase (gray line) as a function of defocus distance, for an imaging systemwith a numerical aperture of 0.14. Within a distance less than 5% of the cloud size,
noise becomes equally distributed between the two quantities and the variances in absorption and phase-contrast images become the same. (Top inset) For low-frequency
phase ﬂuctuations, an in-focus phase noise object gives no amplitude contrast, butwhen moved out of focus it does. (Bottom inset) Sample intensity patterns for a
defocused phase object.

are turned into intensity ﬂuctuations (lower illustration).
This out-of-focus speckle generation is the key mechanism to understand the above
mentioned surprisingly high noise values found for the detuned absorption images.
Unlike for the time-of-ﬂight measurements in the noninteracting gas, the depth ofﬁeld at the necessary lateral resolution does typically not cover the axial extent of
the trapped atom cloud. For instance, the measurements reported on later in thischapter were carried out with a depth of ﬁeld Rayleigh range of 8 μm while the extent
of the cloud along the imaging direction was 135 μm. This means that the sample
thickness ensured contrast conversion, or in other words, suﬃcient defocusing acts likea phase plate, mapping phase ﬂuctuations to intensity ﬂuctuations. Quantitatively
it turns out that this defocus-induced redistribution of phase and amplitude noise

88happens over distances on the order of the imaging depth of ﬁeld as illustrated by thesimulations in Figure 4-5. Reference [66] provides further details about these Fourier
optics based computer simulations and reference [48] contains extensive discussions
about other aspects of speckle physics.
Among the many relevant features and properties of out-of-focus speckle the following three are most important for a later image analysis:
1. Phase and amplitude noise equilibrate 1:1 after a short propagation distancecorresponding to the depth of ﬁeld of the imaging system.
2. Small phase-excursion speckle OD noise is additive; assuming a balanced spin
mixture and symmetric detuning the speckle OD variance signal is proportionalto Δ(N1 − N2 ) in the corresponding pixel column region.
3. Non-symmetric imaging light detunings can be used to probe a correspondingly
diﬀerent linear combination of N1 and N2 ﬂuctuations. However, this is typicallyaccompanied by more pronounced background normalization imperfections.
Since the numerically exact relation between imaging signal and atom number
ﬂuctuations is for speckle images not as straightforwardly derived as in the previous
chapter for standard absorption images, it is helpful to experimentally calibrate thespeckle noise data by ﬁrst performing measurements on an noninteracting gas withknown outcome.

4.4

Data acquisition and analysis

4.4.1

Experimental setup and sample preparation

The above discussion made clear that speckle imaging does not require any specialized
optics infrastructure. Hence the employed imaging setup is very similar to the one
described in Figure 3-5 with the only diﬀerence that the second stage magniﬁcationis chosen to be 1:5 instead of 1:2 leading to an overall magniﬁcation by a factor 1089which is a necessary adaption to the higher densities and smaller dimensions of thetrapped atom samples.
The experiments were performed with typically 106 6 Li atoms in each of the twolowest hyperﬁne states |1 and |2 conﬁned in an optical dipole trap oriented at 45
degrees to the imaging axis with radial and axial trap frequencies ωr = 2π × 108.9(6)s−1 and ωz = 2π×7.75(3) s−1 , corresponding to spin state densities of n = 5×1017 m−3
and a Fermi energy EF = h × 8.2 kHz. This particular geometry made it possible
to easily check and conﬁrm that the speckle noise technique delivers robust results
insensitive against variations of the defocus distance: The left and right wings of theelongated cloud are further out of focus but constraining the analysis to these regionsdelivers similar amounts of noise compared to the central part of the atom cloud.
For the samples imaged at 527 G, the sample preparation was analogous to that
described in chapter 3, with a temperature of 0.14(1) TF . The samples imaged atother magnetic ﬁelds were prepared in a similar fashion, except that evaporation
was performed at 1000 G (BCS side of the crossover) to a ﬁnal temperature of T =0.13(1) TF before ramping the magnetic ﬁeld over 1.5 s to its ﬁnal value (adiabaticallyfollowing the lowest branch). The temperature at 1000 G was determined by ﬁtting
a noninteracting Thomas-Fermi distribution in time of ﬂight. The temperatures atother points in the crossover were related to that value assuming an isentropic ramp,
using thermodynamic calculations presented in [67]. Using this method temperatures
were found to be 0.13(1) TF at 915 G, 0.19(1) TF at 830 G, and 0.19(3) TF at 790
G where additional evaporation was performed to achieve a central optical density
similar to that at the other magnetic ﬁelds. The extent of the cloud along the imaging
direction was 135 μm, much larger than the Rayleigh range of 8 μm for the imaging
system with a NA of 0.14 and quadratic resolution elements measuring 2.6 μm.

4.4.2

Noise extraction and mapping procedure

The goal of the noise measurements in interacting Fermi gases12 is to determine atvarious interaction strengths the normalized susceptibility χ = χ/χ0 and compress12

See chapter 2 for a short theoretical introduction.

90

|e>

671 nm|2>
76 MHz|1>

Figure 4-6: Two diﬀerent imaging light detunings are used to access ﬂuctuations in(n1 − n2 ) and (n1 /3 + n2 ). The excited state |e corresponds to the mJ = −3/2
manifold as depicted in Figure 3-8.

 = κ/κ0 , where χ0 = 3n/(2EF ) and κ0 = 3/(2nEF ) are the susceptibility andibility κcompressibility of a zero-temperature non interacting Fermi gas with the same total
density n and Fermi energy EF .
As previously described, for diﬀerent choices of the probe light frequency, the two
atomic spin states will have diﬀerent real polarizabilities and the local refractive index
will be a diﬀerent linear combination of the (line-of-sight integrated) column densities
n1 and n2 . To measure the susceptibility a probe light frequency exactly between theresonances for states |1 and |2 was chosen, so that the real polarizabilities areopposite and the refractive index is proportional to the magnetization (n1 − n2 ). The
intensity ﬂuctuations on the detector after propagation are consequently proportional
to the ﬂuctuations in magnetization. Since a refractive index proportional to (n1 +n2 )occurs only in the limit of inﬁnite detuning, ﬂuctuations in the total density aremeasured by exploiting the fact that these ﬂuctuations can be inferred from theﬂuctuations in two diﬀerent linear combinations of n1 and n2 . For convenience, thesecond linear combination is obtained using a detuning that has the same value, but
opposite sign for state |2, and therefore three times the value for state |1 as shown in
Figure 4-6. Because the dispersive signal scales inversely proportional to the detuning,
images of the ﬂuctuations in (n1 /3 + n2 ) are recorded with this imaging frequency.

91

Optical Density

0.6
0.4
0.2
0

100 μm

6
4
2
0

5

10
15
20
25
Pixels (1 pixel = 2.6 μm)

−4

x 10

OD Variance

OD Variance

8

5

1/(kFa)= ∞

−4

x 10

30

1/(kFa)= 0

4
3
2
1
0

5

10
15
20
25
30
Pixels (1 pixel = 2.6 μm)

Figure 4-7: (Top) Example speckle noise image, with white box indicating analysis region. (Bottom) Noise data for noninteracting (left) and resonantly interacting (right)
cold clouds, showing Δ2− (black dots) and Δ2+ (gray dots). Solid lines are Gaussianﬁts to the data, and dotted lines illustrate the expected full Poissonian noise for thecorresponding quantities based on density determined from oﬀ-resonant absorption.

The noise analysis procedure was nearly identical to that performed for the expanded gas (see chapter 3). A high-pass ﬁlter with a cutoﬀ wavelength of 13 μm wasapplied to each image of the cloud to minimize the eﬀect of ﬂuctuations in total atom
number. Then, for each pixel position, the variance of the optical densities at that
position in the diﬀerent images was computed. After the subtraction of the contribution of photon shot noise, the resulting variance image reﬂects the noise contribution
from the atoms.
To calibrate the speckle method, ﬂuctuation measurements were performed in anoninteracting mixture, realized at a magnetic ﬁeld of 527 G where the scattering
length between the two states vanishes. Figure 4-7 shows raw proﬁles of the OD
variances Δ2− and Δ2+ measured at the two detunings. These ﬂuctuations in the
speckle pattern are proportional to number ﬂuctuations in the probe volume V :Δ2− = (c Δ(N1 − N2 ))2 and Δ2+ = (c Δ(N1 /3 + N2 ))2 .

92(4.11)

In these relations c and c are the factors which have to be calibrated. Without
interactions, N1 and N2 are uncorrelated, and one predicts(Δ(N1 − N2 ))2= 1.8(Δ(N1 /3 + N2 ))2(4.12)The observed ratio of Δ2− /Δ2+ = 1.56(14) reﬂects excess noise contributing to Δ2+due to residual systematic dispersive eﬀects and is accounted for by setting c /c =

1.8/1.56. For high temperatures, the atomic noise of the non-interacting gas ap-

proaches shot noise, for lower temperatures a reduction in noise due to Pauli blocking
in analogy to the ﬁndings of chapter 3 is observed.
The ﬂuctuation-response theorem connects the two variances (Δ(N1 − N2 ))2 and via(Δ(N1 + N2 ))2 to the normalized susceptibility χ and compressibility κ(Δ(N1 − N2 ))2 =3N
3N
(T /TF ) χ and (Δ(N1 + N2 ))2 =(T /TF ) κ
2
2(4.13)

with N = N1 +N2 . Recomposing the variances from the two experimentally accessible
linear combinations these relations become

Δ2+
Δ2−
Δ2−
 and 9/4
.
=
3/2
(T
/T
)
χ
−
1/4
= 3/2 (T /TF ) κ
F
N c2
N c2
N c2

(4.14)

The constants c and c are determined using the noise measurements at 527 G for a = 1 + O (T /TF )2 . Line-of-sight integranoninteracting Fermi gas for which χ = κtion corrections are ignored in this analysis.

93Magnetic Field [G]Condensate Fraction

0.4

790

834

845 855 865

0.0

-0.2

915

0.3
0.2
0.1
0.0
1.0

0.8

0.6

0.4

0.2

-0.4

-0.6

-0.8

-1.0

1/kFa

Figure 4-8: Measured condensate fraction as a function of dimensionless interaction
strength 1/(kF a). Insets show typical images from which the condensate fraction was
extracted by ﬁtting a bimodal distribution. The dashed line is a sigmoidal ﬁt to guidethe eye.

4.4.3

Determination of the superﬂuid to normal phase boundary

As discussed earlier a quantum gas in the BEC-BCS crossover is expected to undergo at suﬃciently low temperatures a phase transition between a normal and asuperﬂuid state. For the later interpretation of the noise measurement results it is
helpful to know where exactly this transition occurs. Therefore the phase boundary
was experimentally determined via the standard technique of molecular condensate
fraction measurements [63, 68] using magnetic ﬁeld sweeps. For this, the magnetic
ﬁeld was rapidly switched to 570 G to transfer atom pairs to more deeply bound pairs(molecules) which survive ballistic expansion. For resonant imaging of the molecules,
the ﬁeld was ramped back to 790 G over 10 ms. The condensate fraction was determined by ﬁtting the one-dimensional density proﬁles with a bimodal distribution
yielding the results presented in Figure 4-8. For the given experimental conditions
a signiﬁcant superﬂuid fraction is found in direct vicinity of the Feshbach resonanceand further down on the BEC side as expected for the temperatures reported above
[36].

94

1/kFa

1/kFa
1.2

1.0 0

∞

-1.0

-1.5

∞

1.0 0

1/kFa
-1.0

-1.5

∞

1.0

1.0 0

-1.0

-1.5

4

1.0
0.8
0.8
0.6

κ / κ0

χ/χ

χ/κ

0

3

0.6

2

0.4

0.4

1

0.2

0.2
0.0

0.0
527

800

900

1000

0
527

800

900

1000

527

800

900

1000

Magnetic Field (G)Magnetic Field (G)Magnetic Field (G)

(a)

(b)

(c)

Figure 4-9: (a) The ratio χ/κ, (b) the normalized susceptibility χ/χ0 , and (c) the
normalized compressibility κ/κ0 in the BEC-BCS crossover. The variances derived
from sequences of images are converted into thermodynamic variables using the measured temperatures and a calibration factor determined from the noninteracting gas.
The vertical line indicates the onset region of superﬂuidity, as determined via condensate fraction measurements. The curves show theoretical zero temperature estimates
based on 1st (dotted) and 2nd order (solid) perturbative formulas obtained from Landau’s Fermi-liquid theory integrated along the line of sight, and results from a Monte
Carlo calculation (dashed) for the compressibility in a homogeneous system [69].

4.5

Results and interpretation

Applying the above noise analysis procedure to the data series taken at various interaction strengths along the BEC-BCS crossover leads to the susceptibility and compressibility results displayed in Figure 4-9. The measurements reproduce the expected
qualitative behavior: For the sample at unitarity (834 G), where the transition temperature is suﬃciently high that a sizable portion of the sample is superﬂuid, and forthe sample on the BEC side, the spin susceptibility is strongly suppressed relative
to the compressibility. This reﬂects the fact that the atoms form bound molecules
or generalized Cooper pairs; the spin susceptibility should be exponentially small inthe binding energy, while the enhanced compressibility reﬂects the bosonic characterof the molecular condensate. At 915G and 1000G, where the sample is above thesuperﬂuid critical temperature, the susceptibility is larger but still below its value
95

for the noninteracting gas, reﬂecting the persistence of pair correlations even in thenormal phase of the gas.
Above the Feshbach resonance, for attractive interactions, the results are compared to ﬁrst and second order perturbation theory in the small parameter kF a. This
ignores the instability to the superﬂuid BCS state at exponentially small temperatures. The perturbation theory is formulated for the Landau parameters for a Fermi
liquid [35, 33] as theoretically discussed in the context of equation (2.27). Although
the experimental data are taken for relatively strong interactions outside the rangeof validity for a perturbative description, the predictions still capture the trends observed in the normal phase above the Feshbach resonance. This shows that moreaccurate measurements of the susceptibility, and a careful study of its temperaturedependence, are required to reveal the presence of a possible pseudogap phase as
proposed in [67].
This analysis neglects the small probe volume quantum ﬂuctuations derived inequation (2.26) which are present even at zero temperature. For ﬂuctuations of thetotal density, their relative contribution is roughly N −1/3 /(T /TF ). Attractive interactions and pairing suppress both the thermal and quantum spin ﬂuctuations, but it
remains to be further investigated at what temperature quantum ﬂuctuations become
essential.
Spin susceptibilities could be alternatively obtained from the equation of state
which can be determined by analyzing the average density proﬁles of imbalanced
mixtures [5]. The speckle method has the advantage of being applicable without
imbalance, and requires only local thermal equilibrium. Moreover, ﬂuctuations canbe compared with susceptibilities determined from the equation of state to perform
absolute, model-independent thermometry for strongly interacting systems [70].
In conclusion, this chapter has demonstrated speckle imaging as a new technique to determine spin susceptibilities of ultracold atomic gases. The technique
has been validated and calibrated using an ideal Fermi gas and was then applied toa strongly interacting Fermi gas in the BEC-BCS crossover. Being an in-situ method
speckle imaging is directly applicable to studying pairing and magnetic ordering of96

two-component gases in optical lattices. Even without quantitative reﬁnements it iswell suited to diagnose the onset of phase transitions that are accompanied by thedevelopment of spatial correlations as demonstrated in the next chapter.

97

Chapter 5
Exploring correlations in a
repulsively interacting Fermi gas
This chapter focuses on the experiment reported in the following publication: C. Sanner, E. J. Su, W. Huang, A. Keshet, J. Gillen, and W. Ketterle, “Correlations andPair Formation in a Repulsively Interacting Fermi Gas”. Included in Appendix C.

While the previous two chapters were mainly concerned with the development andproof-of-principle demonstration of new noise measurement techniques, this chapter
reports on an application of these techniques to diagnose a ferromagnetic phase transition in a repulsively interacting Fermi gas. Accordingly, special emphasis is given to
the relevant features and advantages of noise measurements in this context, whereas
theoretical background information and other experimental aspects are just brieﬂy
touched upon or referenced to.

5.1

Ferromagnetic instability of a repulsive Fermi
gas

Consider a repulsively interacting balanced Fermi gas mixture as already introducedin the discussion of Figure 4-1. Neglecting the decay from the repulsive branch to the

98

2/3

2 EF

EF

?

EnergyEnergyincreasing repulsion

VolumeVolumeFigure 5-1: Schematic diagram illustrating the hypothetical repulsion-induced ferromagnetic transition from two overlapped noninteracting Fermi seas each with Fermi
energy EF to two fully developed macroscopic spin domains. For the case of anoninteracting homogeneous gas in a given volume V the Fermi energy scales asEF ∝ (N/V )2/3 and accordingly the two domains correspond to separate Fermi seaswith Fermi energies 22/3 EF .

lowest-lying energy branch, it is interesting to speculate about the system’s behavior
under increasing interaction strengths. Two intuitive scenarios seem possible: Dueto the increasing repulsion the system builds up strong local anticorrelations between
the two spin components but no long range order is established. Or alternatively,
spin domains are formed so that the increase in repulsion energy is limited to small
regions at the domain boundaries, but at the same time the Fermi pressure within thedomains is higher, i.e. the total kinetic energy is increased as sketched in Figure 5-1.
Not surprisingly, this problem or rather an analogous solid state model considering
electron bands has been extensively studied in the theoretical literature, where it is
known as the Stoner model of ferromagnetism [71]. While the exact application ofthis model to typical magnetic materials with their complex electronic structure ischallenging [72], it turns out that the Stoner Hamiltonian with its assumption of azero-range repulsion between fermions of opposite spin is very well reproduced in
the case of repulsively interacting ultracold neutral fermions. This motivated Jo
et al. [25] to experimentally investigate the system and search for a ferromagnetic
phase as predicted by the Stoner model. Although they found certain hints andindications supporting the assumption of a ferromagnetic state, it was not possible toobtain direct evidence for ferromagnetic domains. The reported ﬁndings of suppressed99inelastic three-body collisions1 and of a minimum of the kinetic energy immediately
followed by a steep rise (above a critical interaction value, cf. Figure 5-1) wererather unspeciﬁc signatures - in particular when dealing with metastable and not
fully equilibrated samples. Given this situation speckle imaging appeared as the ideal
experimental method to reliably identify and quantify spatial domains: As explained
below in more detail the formation of spin domains of m atoms must be accompanied
by an increase of the spin density variance by the same factor, which could be easily
diagnosed via speckle imaging.
A lot of theoretical eﬀort [73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85] hasbeen invested to further understand Stoner-type ferromagnetism, and in particular
the experimental results from reference [25] triggered many additional studies andnumerical Monte Carlo simulations [86, 87].

5.1.1

The critical interaction strength

One key question for the experimental observation of the phase transition is the approximate localization of the critical interaction strength (kF a)c for domain formation.
Most of the above referenced theoretical approaches ﬁnd with some scatter a criticalinteraction parameter around (kF a)c = 1 and simple zero temperature mean-ﬁeld
models arrive at similar results. For instance, with the ansatz [25]E = 2V nEF

32[(1 + η)5/3 + (1 − η)5/3 ] + 2V nEF kF a(1 + η)(1 − η)
10
3π

(5.1)

for the total energy E of a two-component Fermi gas of average spin component
density n and magnetization η = (n1 − n2 )/(n1 + n2 ) it is clear that it becomes atlarger scattering lengths a preferable to avoid interaction energy (second term) at
the cost of increased kinetic energy (ﬁrst term). In other words, the phase transition
1

In order to form molecules, three fermions with opposite pseudospin would need to be close
together which is increasingly unlikely when the system is arranged in polarized spin clusters.

100

should occur when the minimum in total energy is found at nonzero magnetization
which happens for this model at kF a > π/2. Alternatively, the same result is obtained when extending Landau’s Fermi liquid theory [33] beyond the perturbative
limit by examining the large kF a behavior of the from equation (2.27) derived inverse
susceptibilityχ0216(2 + ln 2)= 1 − kF a −(kF a)2 .
χ
π
15π 2

(5.2)

To ﬁrst order χ diverges at (kF a)c = π/2 = 1.57 and the second-order expansion
suggests (kF a)c = 1.05.

5.1.2

Pairing instability vs. ferromagnetic instability

The Stoner model assumes a two-component Fermi gas with a repulsive short-range
interaction described by a single parameter, the scattering length. The predicted
phase transition to a ferromagnetic state requires large repulsive positive scattering
lengths on the order of the interatomic spacing, but strong repulsive short-range
interactions cannot be realized by purely repulsive forces. For instance, a repulsive
square well potential is characterized by a positive scattering length a smaller than orequal to the barrier radius. Strong interactions with kF a ≥ 1 require this radius to becomparable to the Fermi wavelength λF = 2π/kF and are no longer short range2 . On
the other hand arbitrarily large repulsive positive scattering lengths can be realizedby short-range attractive potentials with a loosely bound state with binding energyh̄2 /(ma2 ), m being the atomic mass.
However, the repulsive gas is then by necessity only metastable with respect todecay into the bound state, as shown schematically in Figure 4-1. Most theoreticalstudies of a Fermi gas with strong short-range repulsive interactions assume that the2More generally, potentials with a positive scattering length a are bound state free only if theeﬀective range re is larger than a/2. Otherwise, the in equation (4.3) introduced s-wave scattering
amplitude f (k) = −1/(a−1 + ık − k 2 re /2) has a pole on the imaginary axis corresponding to a boundstate.

101

magnetic
fieldspeckle trap
image
off
B
A

350 μst

Figure 5-2: Timing diagram of the experiment. A rapid magnetic ﬁeld change is
employed to quickly jump from a weakly interacting Fermi gas (A) to a stronglyinteracting one (B). The evolution of correlations and domains and the molecule
formation (population of the lower branch) are studied as a function of hold time t.

metastable state is suﬃciently long-lived, and in recent Monte-Carlo simulations, thepaired state is projected out in the time evolution of the system [86, 87]. In contrast,
reference [85] explicitly considered the competition between pairing and ferromagnetic instability and concluded that the pairing instability is typically faster than the
ferromagnetic instability. From the above discussion it is clear that experimentallyinvestigating ferromagnetism in a Fermi gas must go hand in hand with a study ofthe pair formation dynamics [88].

5.2

Experimental strategy

Sample preparation
The experiments were carried out with typically 4.2×105 6 Li atoms in each of the twolower spin states |1 and |2 conﬁned in an optical dipole trap with radial and axial
trap frequencies ωr = 2π × 100(1) s−1 and ωz = 2π × 9.06(25) s−1 . The sample was
evaporatively cooled at a magnetic bias ﬁeld B = 320 G, identical to the proceduredescribed in chapter 3 (far away from the Feshbach resonance the sample is stableand decay into the bound state is negligible). Then the magnetic ﬁeld was slowly
ramped (adiabatically following the upper branch) to 730 G (kF a = 0.35) in 500
ms (see Figure 5-2). The fraction of atoms being converted to molecules during theramp was measured (see below for method) to be below 5 %. The temperature of102

attractive
branchrepulsive
branch(A)(B)

Figure 5-3: (A) Single speckle images and (B) vertically processed OD noise variance
proﬁles for samples prepared at a magnetic ﬁeld of 790 G (kF a = 1.1) on the attractive
and repulsive interaction branches. While the samples exhibit very similar temperatures and density distributions, the measured amounts of spin noise (Δ(n1 − n2 ))2are dramatically diﬀerent, reﬂecting the very diﬀerent microscopic nature of the two
Fermi gases, i.e. Bose-Einstein condensed molecule-like bound atom pairs in one casevs. increasingly anticorrelated fermionic atoms in the other case. A careful inspection reveals that even a single ”repulsive” speckle image appears already visibly moregranular than its smooth attractive counterpart. The particular trap geometry of acigar shaped cloud elongated along the imaging axis makes it possible to eﬃciently
measure spin ﬂuctuations accumulated along the long axis. Compared with a noninteracting Fermi gas cloud, the noise variance is suppressed by a factor of 0.2 inthe attractive case and enhanced by a factor of 1.4 in the repulsive case. One pixel
corresponds to a 2.6 μm square in the object plane.

the cloud was typically 0.23(3) TF at 527 G with a Fermi energy of EF = kB TF =h × 6.1 kHz. After rapidly switching the magnetic ﬁeld from 730 G to the ﬁnal valuein less than 350 μs, spin ﬂuctuations Δ(n1 − n2 ) were measured by speckle imaging3
following the procedures described in chapter 4. Due to the use of 20 cm diameter coils
outside the vacuum chamber, the inductance of the magnet coils was 330 μH and thefast switching was accomplished by a servo-controlled rapid discharge of capacitors
charged to 500 V [66].
For the experiments reported in chapter 4 samples were prepared on the lower
branch of the Feshbach resonance, where positive values of kF a correspond to a gasof weakly bound molecules. Accordingly, a suppression of spin ﬂuctuations and an
3

Optionally an appropriate RF pulse was applied directly before imaging to rotate the spinorientation along the measurement axis, i.e. rotate a possible superposition state |1 + |2 into |1
or |2.

103

enhancement of density ﬂuctuations were observed. In this study, on the metastable
upper branch of the Feshbach resonance, the situation is reversed, which becomes
directly visible when comparing single raw speckle images as shown in Figure 5-3.
For unbound atoms, as the interaction strength increases, the two spin components
should develop stronger and stronger anticorrelations and enhanced spin ﬂuctuations,
eventually reaching a phase transition to a ferromagnetic state where the magnetic
susceptibility and therefore the spin ﬂuctuations diverge. Recent Monte Carlo simulations [86] predicted such a divergence around kF a = 0.83, not far away from theestimates derived above.
Domain size and spin ﬂuctuations
When spin domains of m atoms form, the spin density variance will increase by a factor
of m, which is illustrated by a simpliﬁed model assuming Poissonian ﬂuctuations
in a given probe volume within the atom sample: With on average N atoms in√this volume one would measure a standard deviation in the atom number of N .
However, if the atoms formed clusters each made of m atoms the standard deviationof the number of clusters would be

N/m, leading to a variance in atom numberof (m N/m)2 = mN . Consequently, for the above described samples in the criticalinteraction region a dramatic increase of spin ﬂuctuations by one or several orders ofmagnitude was expected, depending on the size of the magnetic domains.

5.3

Experimental results - Discussion and interpretation

5.3.1

Spin ﬂuctuation measurements

Figure 5-4 shows the observed spin ﬂuctuations enhancement compared to the noninteracting cloud at 527 G. The variance enhancement factor reaches its maximum
value of 1.6 immediately after the quench, decreasing during the 2 ms afterward.
The absence of a dramatic increase shows that no domains form and that the sample
104

kFa

Relative spin fluctuations

1.6

0

0.65 1.14 2.27 ∞

(a)

1.6

1.4

1.4

1.2

1.2

1

1
800
527 750
Magnetic field (G)

850

(b)

0

1
2
Hold time (ms)3

Figure 5-4: Spin ﬂuctuations (a) after 350 μs as a function of magnetic ﬁeld and (b)on resonance as a function of hold time scaled to the value measured at 527 G. Even
at strong repulsive interactions, the measured spin ﬂuctuations are just moderately
enhanced, indicating only short-range correlations and no domain formation. The spin
ﬂuctuations were determined for square bins of 2.6 μm, each containing on average
1000 atoms per spin state.

remains in the paramagnetic phase throughout. Similar observations were made for awide range of interaction strengths and wait times. Note that ﬁrst-order perturbation
theory [35] predicts an increase of the susceptibility by a factor of 1.5 at kF a = 0.5 andby a factor of 2 at kF a = 0.8 (i.e. no dramatic increase for kF a < 1). Therefore, themeasurements show no evidence for the Fermi gas approaching the Stoner instability.

5.3.2

Pair formation measurements

To fully interpret the spin ﬂuctuation measurements, one has to take into accountthe decay of the atomic sample on the upper branch of the Feshbach resonance intobound pairs. The pair formation is characterized by comparing the total number ofatoms and molecules Na + 2Nmol (determined by taking an absorption image after
ballistic expansion at high magnetic ﬁeld where molecules and atoms have the sameabsorption resonance) to the number of free atoms (determined by rapidly sweeping
the magnetic ﬁeld to 5G before releasing the atoms and imaging the cloud, converting105Hold time [ms]
0

20

40

60

80

100

120

140

1

0.8

0.8

0.6

0.6

0.4

0.4

0.2

0.2

0

0

Molecule Fract ion

Surviving fract ion

1

Surviving fract ion

1
0.8
0.6
0.4
0

1

2

3
4
Hold time [ms]5

6

Figure 5-5: Characterization of molecule formation at short and long hold times, andat diﬀerent values of the interaction strength. The closed symbols, circles (black) at
790G with kF a = 1.14, squares (blue) at 810G with kF a = 2.27 and diamonds (red) at
818G with kF a = 3.5 represent the normalized number of free atoms, the open symbols
the total number of atoms including those bound in Feshbach molecules (open circles
at 790G with kF a = 1.14). The crosses (green) show the molecule fraction. The
characteristic time scale is set by the Fermi time h̄/EF = 43μs, calculated with acloud averaged Fermi energy.

pairs into deeply bound molecules that are completely shifted out of resonance) [62].
The time evolution of the molecule production (Figure 5-5) shows two regimes of
distinct behavior. Already for times less than 1 ms, a considerable number of atoms
is converted into molecules, while the total number Na +2Nmol remains constant. The
initial drop in atom number becomes larger as the ﬁnal magnetic ﬁeld is increased,
and saturates at around 50 % near the Feshbach resonance.
106

This fast initial decay in atom number can be attributed to recombination [89, 90]
into the weakly bound molecular state. One obtains an atom loss rate Ṅa /Na =250 s−1 at 790 G in the ﬁrst 1 ms after the magnetic ﬁeld switch. Assuming a threebody process the rate coeﬃcient L3 at this ﬁeld is estimated to be 3.9 × 10−22 cm6 s−1 ,though the interaction is already suﬃciently strong for many-body eﬀects to be signiﬁcant. For stronger interactions, about 30% of atom loss occurs already during therelevant 100 μs of ramping through the strongly interacting region, indicating a lower
bound of around 3 × 103 s−1 for the loss rate which is 13% of the inverse Fermi time
EF /h̄, calculated with a cloud averaged Fermi energy.
After the ﬁrst millisecond, the molecule formation rate slows down, by an order ofmagnitude at a magnetic ﬁeld of 790 G (and even more dramatically at higher ﬁelds)
when it reaches about 50 %. It seems likely that the molecule fraction has reached aquasi-equilibrium value at the local temperature, which is larger than the initial temperature due to local heating accompanying the molecule formation. Reference [91]presents a simple model for the equilibrium between atoms and molecules (ignoringstrong interactions). For phase space densities around unity and close to resonance,
the predicted molecule fraction is 0.5, in good agreement with the measurements.
For longer time scales (hundred milliseconds) a steady increase of the molecule
fraction to 90 % for the longest hold time is observed. This occurs due to continuous
evaporation which cools down the system and shifts the atom-molecule equilibrium
towards high molecule fractions. During the same time scale, a slow loss in both
atom number and total number is observed caused by inelastic collisions (vibrational
relaxation of molecules) and evaporation loss.

5.3.3

Rate comparison

These results suggest that the conversion into molecules is necessarily comparable
to or even faster than the evolution of ferromagnetic domains. First, for strong
interactions with kF a around 1, one expects both instabilities (pair formation andStoner instability) to have rates which scale with the Fermi energy EF and therefore
with n2/3 . Accordingly, one cannot change the competition between the instabilities107

by working at higher or lower densities. Following reference [85] the fastest unstablemodes for domain formation have a wavevector q ≈ kF /2 and grow at a rate of up to
EF /(4h̄) when the cloud is quenched suﬃciently far beyond the critical interaction
strength. Unstable modes with such wavevectors will develop “domains” of half awavelength or size ξ = π/q = 2π/kF containing 5 atoms per spin state in a volume
ξ 3 . This rate is comparable to the observed conversion rates into pairs of 0.13 EF .
Therefore, at best, “domains” of a few particles could form, but before they can growfurther and prevent the formation of pairs (in a fully polarized state), rapid pairformation takes over and populates the lower branch of the Feshbach resonance.

5.3.4

Temperature considerations

An important question regarding the phase transition is the existence of a temperature threshold for domain formation. Available theoretical treatments do not predictan exact maximum transition temperature to the ferromagnetic state. Since the only
energy scale is the Fermi temperature, it is reasonable to expect a transition temperature which is a fraction of the Fermi temperature [92], higher or around thetemperature scale probed in the experiment. However, even above the transition
temperature, the susceptibility should not abruptly fall oﬀ.
Temperatures are notoriously diﬃcult to measure in a transient way for a dynamic
system which may not be in full equilibrium. For example, standard cloud shape
thermometry [50] requires full equilibration and lifetimes much longer than the longest
trap period. Noise thermometry (see chapter 3) on the other hand does not rely ona global cloud equilibrium and is therefore an ideal tool to estimate temperatures ofsuch samples. Temperatures were measured after the hold time near the Feshbachresonance by quickly switching the magnetic ﬁeld to weak interactions at 527 G andthen performing noise thermometry using speckle imaging as described in chapter
4. The measurements found column-integrated ﬂuctuations that are 0.61(8) of the
Poisson value which implies an eﬀective temperature well below TF , around 0.33(7)TF , not much higher than the initial temperature of 0.23 TF .
Alternatively, the temperature increase can be estimated from the heat released108

by pair formation. Molecule formation heats the sample by transferring the binding
energy and excess kinetic energy of the molecules to the remaining atoms, and also by
creating holes in the Fermi sea. For small values of kF a, the total energy release permolecule is therefore h̄2 /(ma2 ) + 2EF . From the energy per particle [29] for an ideal
homogeneous degenerate Fermi gas E = 0.6 EF [1 + (5π 2 /12)(T /TF )2 ] one obtains
T
=
TF



4η
1
1+
2
π
(kF a)2

(5.3)

for the ﬁnal temperature with a small molecule fraction η (assuming initially η = 0
and T = 0). Evaluating this result at kF a = 1, where the two-body binding energy is
2EF , one ﬁnds that molecule fractions of higher than 20 % result in a ﬁnal temperature
above 0.4TF , an estimate which is somewhat higher than the measurement reported
above.

5.3.5

Kinetic energy and release energy

Jo et al. reported in [25] evidence for ferromagnetic domains also based on the observation of a non-monotonic behavior of the kinetic energy when measured at increasing
interaction strengths. Given the negative results obtained via noise measurements it
is appropriate to reexamine the kinetic energy ﬁndings employing an experimental
setup with better time resolution.
The energy of a trapped interacting gas is the sum of three contributions: thekinetic energy, the interaction energy, and the potential energy in the trapping potential.

E = T + Uint + Utrap(5.4)

By suddenly releasing the atoms from the trap and measuring the radius of the cloud,
it is possible to measure either the release energy (T + Uint ) or the kinetic energy T,
depending on whether the interactions are left on or are switched oﬀ, respectively,
109

kFa
0.50

0.72

1.14

2.27

∞

Relative cloud size squared

0.36

Magnetic field [G]Figure 5-6: Measured transverse mean square cloud size after time-of-ﬂight expansion
as a function of the interaction strength before the release in units of the value ofthe noninteracting cloud. The interactions are switched oﬀ (black squares) or left on(red circles) at the time of release. For suﬃciently long time-of-ﬂight the transverse
2D release energy is directly proportional to the measured mean square width of thecloud. The expansion is either isotropic (in the case of switched oﬀ interactions) ormostly transverse (in case of strong interactions leading to hydrodynamic expansion)[93, 94]. Uncertainties as indicated by the error bars are purely statistical.

at the time of release, by leaving the external magnetic ﬁeld constant or rapidly
switching it to a value away from the Feshbach resonance.
As described before the system is prepared with variable interaction strength byswitching the magnetic ﬁeld to a value near the Feshbach resonance. For the kinetic
energy measurement, the ﬁeld is again rapidly switched to 5 G, after which the atoms
are released from the trap. After 8 ms of free expansion, the size of the cloud reﬂects the width of the in-trap momentum distribution and the average in-trap kinetic
energy. The in Figure 5-6 documented increase in kinetic energy with increasing interaction strength reﬂects the onset of pair anti-correlations of opposite-spin atoms those anti-correlations reduce the repulsive potential energy at the price of increased
kinetic energy. This increase in kinetic energy is consistent with the observations in
110reference [25]. However, no minimum in kinetic energy as in [25] is observed, since theinteractions are suddenly increased and the cloud cannot adiabatically expand during
the ramp as was the case in the earlier work. For fully spin-polarized domains, thekinetic energy would increase by a factor of 22/3 which provides an upper bound (since
the true ground state must have an energy lower than or equal to the fully phaseseparated state). The smaller observed energy increase (factor of 1.3) implies thatfully spin polarized domains have not formed. It should be noted that the kinetic
energy increase is insensitive to the correlation length or size of domains and cannot clearly distinguish between ferromagnetic domains and strong anti-correlations[78, 95].
In-trap kinetic plus interaction energies are measured when the magnetic ﬁeld isleft at its value near the Feshbach resonance while the trap is switched oﬀ. After 4
ms of the 8 ms free expansion the ﬁeld is switched to 5 G for imaging. The resulting
cloud size is directly related to the release energy of the cloud, the sum of the in-trap
kinetic and interaction energies. Starting around kF a = 0.5, a strong increase of thetransverse release energy by a factor of about 2 is observed4 . The comparison of
kinetic energy and release energy at 790G and 810G shows that the extra energy due
to repulsive interactions is clearly dominated by repulsive potential energy and notby kinetic energy. The latter would occur for ferromagnetic domains. In case of fully
spin-polarized domains, the repulsive interaction energy would vanish, and kinetic
energy and release energy should be the same. Therefore, these energy measurements
support the conclusions derived from the noise measurements and help to rule out aferromagnetic phase.
The interaction-strength dependence of the release energy shows a maximum at
790 G, but the ground state energy should vary monotonically with the strength of
the repulsive interactions. Therefore, the observed maximum is most likely related
to non-equilibrium excitations caused by the sudden jump in the scattering length,
indicating that these energy measurements are possibly aﬀected by systematic errors
4This implies that the total energy has increased by a factor of 5/3 compared to the noninteracting case since the interactions modify the expansion from ballistic to hydrodynamic.

111

and need to be interpreted with caution.

5.3.6

Time scales for domain growth vs. experimental resolution

When investigating the molecule production dynamics two separate time scales were
found - a sub-ms timescale for rapid pair formation, followed by a slower time scaleof tens of milliseconds where further cooling led to a full conversion of the atomic
into a molecular gas. For comparison it is important to discuss in more detail overwhat time scale one could have observed ferromagnetic domain formation if it had
happened.
As mentioned before, Pekker et al. [85] predicted in uniform systems fast growth
rates for small domains. Unstable modes with wavevector q ≈ kF /2 grow at a rate of
up to EF /4h̄ when the cloud is quenched suﬃciently far beyond the critical interaction
strength. This corresponds to a growth time of around 100μs. For a wide range ofinteractions and wavevectors, the predicted growth time is faster than 10h̄/EF or
250μs. During this time one would expect the thermal ﬂuctuations to increase by afactor of e.
Wavevectors q ≈ kF /2 will develop “domains” of half a wavelength or size ξ =π/q = 2π/kF , which is 2.3 μm at the experimental density of 3 × 1011 cm−3 corresponding to kF = 2.7 × 104 cm−1 . For speckle imaging the smallest eﬀective probe
volume is given by the nominal optical resolution of the lens system which is approximately equal to the bin size of 2.6 μm in this experiment. For a bin size d, themeasured ﬂuctuations are an integral over ﬂuctuations at all wavevectors q with aneﬀective cutoﬀ around 1/d. Due to a mode density factor q 2 the largest contribution
comes from wavevectors around π/d which is equal to 0.4 kF for the given experimental parameters, fortuitously close to the wavevector of the fastest growing unstablemodes. Therefore, for a quench across a ferromagnetic phase transition, one would
have expected a sub-millisecond growth time for the spin ﬂuctuations, which was notobserved.

112

Since the experiment starts with a balanced two-state mixture with zero spin
density, formation of random (i.e. uncorrelated) domains requires spin diﬀusion. Fullsensitivity to domains requires spin transport over a distance equal to the eﬀective
measurement bin size. Assuming diﬀusive motion at resonant interactions with a spin
diﬀusivity Ds ≈ h/m as observed in [96] results in a corresponding minimum wait
time of about 300μs. This means that after crossing a ferromagnetic phase transition,formation of domains of a few to tens of particles should have occurred on ms scales
and should have resulted in an observable increase of spin ﬂuctuations.

5.4

Conclusions

The experiment has not shown any evidence for a possible ferromagnetic phase in an
atomic gas in “chemical” equilibrium with dimers. This implies one of the following
possibilities.
(i) The system can be described by a simple Hamiltonian with strong short range
repulsion; however, this Hamiltonian does not lead to ferromagnetism. This
would be in conﬂict with the results of recent quantum Monte-Carlo simulations [86, 87] and second order perturbation theory [77], and in agreement withconclusions based on Tan relations [97].
(ii) The temperature of the gas was too high to observe ferromagnetism. This
would then imply a critical temperature around or below 0.2 T /TF , lower than
generally assumed.
(iii) The presence of a small molecule fraction alters the system suﬃciently so thatit cannot be described anymore by the simple model of an atomic gas withshort-range repulsive interactions.
A previous experiment [25] reported evidence for ferromagnetism by presenting
non-monotonic behavior of atom loss rate, kinetic energy and cloud size when approaching the Feshbach resonance, in agreement with predictions based on the Stoner113

model. The new measurements conﬁrm that the properties of the gas change near
kF a = 1. Similar to [25], features in kinetic and release energy measurements areobserved near the resonance. However, the behavior is more complex than that captured by simple models. Furthermore, the atomic fraction decays non-exponentially(see Figure 5-5), and therefore an extracted decay time will depend on the details of
the measurement such as time resolution. Reference [25] found a maximum of theloss rate of 200 s−1 for a Fermi energy of 28 kHz. The now measured lower bound of
the decay rate of 3 × 103 s−1 is 15 times faster at a ﬁve times smaller Fermi energy. Inview of all this it appears very unlikely that reference [25] has observed ferromagnetic
behavior.
Overall one can conclude that an ultracold gas with strong short range repulsive
interactions near a Feshbach resonance remains in the paramagnetic phase. The fast
formation of molecules and the accompanying heating makes it impossible to study
such a gas in equilibrium, conﬁrming predictions of a rapid conversion of the atomic
gas to pairs [85, 98]. Therefore, the Stoner criterion cannot be applied to ultracold
Fermi gases with short-range repulsive interactions since the neglected competition
with pairing is crucial.
Interesting topics for future research on ferromagnetism and pair formation include
the eﬀects of dimensionality [99, 100], spin imbalance [101, 102], mass imbalance [103],
and lattice and band structure [104, 105].

114

Chapter 6
Conclusions and outlook
In summary this thesis reported on the successful realization of universal noise measurements in quantum degenerate Fermi gases. Starting from theoretical considerations about the ﬂuctuation properties of noninteracting and interacting quantum
gases, a noise measurement and analysis concept based on ﬁnely resolved atom counting was developed and experimentally implemented for an expanded noninteracting
Fermi gas. The new technique was carefully characterized and the measurement results were found to quantitatively reproduce the theoretical expectations.
In a second step the introduction of speckle imaging made it possible to adapt
the previous strategies to the requirements of in-situ measurements in interacting
gases. Speckle imaging, relying on the conversion of density ﬂuctuations into imaging
light wavefront phase ripple that is then converted into intensity noise on the lightdetector, turned out to be a simple and versatile tool for the study of atom-atomcorrelations in two-component mixtures. The obtained results allowed conclusions
about microscopic properties of the interacting gas along the BEC-BCS crossover.
Finally a third experiment explored via speckle imaging the correlation properties of a repulsively interacting metastable Fermi gas. Following the Stoner model offerromagnetism several theories suggested for this system a phase transition to a ferromagnetic state accompanied by the formation of macroscopic pseudospin domains.
A recent experimental study reported further evidence for such a phase transition,
but against all expectations the noise measurements could not conﬁrm these ﬁndings.
115

Instead, a detailed analysis of competing atom pair formation processes led to theconclusion that the fast decay dynamics into molecules inhibits any proper domain
growth.
While it might be interesting to pursue additional research along one of these directions, it will be most rewarding in the future to take the ﬂuctuation measurements
one step further by applying them to the study of a variety of systems in opticallattices and other new quantum phases yet to explore. In this sense the work presented in this thesis contributed towards the implementation of a universal quantum
simulator.

116

Appendix A
Suppression of Density
Fluctuations in a Quantum
Degenerate Fermi Gas
This appendix contains a printout of Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 040402 (2010): Christian
Sanner, Edward J. Su, Aviv Keshet, Ralf Gommers, Yong-il Shin, Wujie Huang, and
Wolfgang Ketterle, Suppression of Density Fluctuations in a Quantum Degenerate
Fermi Gas.

117

PRL 105, 040402 (2010)

Selected for a Viewpoint in Physics
PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS

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23 JULY 2010

Suppression of Density Fluctuations in a Quantum Degenerate Fermi Gas
Christian Sanner, Edward J. Su, Aviv Keshet, Ralf Gommers, Yong-il Shin, Wujie Huang, and Wolfgang Ketterle
MIT-Harvard Center for Ultracold Atoms, Research Laboratory of Electronics, and Department of Physics,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge Massachusetts 02139, USA(Received 7 May 2010; published 19 July 2010)
We study density proﬁles of an ideal Fermi gas and observe Pauli suppression of density ﬂuctuations(atom shot noise) for cold clouds deep in the quantum degenerate regime. Strong suppression is observedfor probe volumes containing more than 10 000 atoms. Measuring the level of suppression provides
sensitive thermometry at low temperatures. After this method of sensitive noise measurements has beenvalidated with an ideal Fermi gas, it can now be applied to characterize phase transitions in strongly
correlated many-body systems.
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.105.040402

PACS numbers: 03.75.Ss, 05.30.Fk, 67.85.Lm

Systems of fermions obey the Pauli exclusion principle.
Processes that would require two fermions to occupy thesame quantum state are suppressed. In recent years, several classic experiments have directly observed manifestations of Pauli suppression in Fermi gases. Antibunching
and the suppression of noise correlations are a direct consequence of the forbidden double occupancy of a quantum state. Such experiments were carried out for electrons [1–3], neutral atoms [4,5], and neutrons [6]. In
principle, such experiments can be done with fermionsat any temperature, but in practice low temperatures increase the signal. A second class of (two-body) Pauli
suppression effects, the suppression of collisions, requires
a temperature low enough such that the de Broglie wavelength of the fermions becomes larger than the range of theinteratomic potential and p-wave collisions freeze-out.
Experiments observed the suppression of elastic collisions[7] and of clock shifts in radio frequency spectroscopy[8,9].
Here we report on the observation of Pauli suppressionof density ﬂuctuations. This is, like the suppression ofcollisions between different kinds of fermions [10], amany-body phenomenon which occurs only at even lower
temperatures in the quantum degenerate regime, where theFermi gas is cooled below the Fermi temperature and thelow lying quantum states are occupied with probabilities
close to 1. In contrast, an ideal Bose gas close to quantum
degeneracy shows enhanced ﬂuctuations [11].
The development of a technique to sensitively measuredensity ﬂuctuations was motivated by the connection between density ﬂuctuations and compressibility through theﬂuctuation-dissipation theorem. In this Letter, we validate
our technique for determining the compressibility by applying it to the ideal Fermi gas. In future work, it could be
extended to interesting many-body phases in optical lattices which are distinguished by their incompressibility [12].
These include the band insulator, Mott insulator, and also
the antiferromagnet for which spin ﬂuctuations, i.e., ﬂuctuations of the difference in density between the two spinstates are suppressed.
0031-9007=10=105(4)=040402(4)Until now, sub-Poissonian number ﬂuctuations of ultracold atoms have been observed only for small clouds ofbosons with typically a few hundred atoms [13–16] anddirectly [17,18] or indirectly [19] for the bosonic Mott
insulator in optical lattices. For fermions in optical lattices,
the crossover to an incompressible Mott insulator phase
was inferred from the fraction of double occupations [20]or the cloud size [21]. Here we report the observation ofdensity ﬂuctuations in a large cloud of fermions, showing
sub-Poissonian statistics for atom numbers in excess of
10 000 per probe volume.
The basic concept of the experiment is to repeatedly
produce cold gas clouds and then count the number ofatoms in a small probe volume within the extended cloud.
Many iterations allow us to determine the average atom
number N in the probe volume and its variance ðNÞ2 . For
independent particles, one expects Poisson statistics, i.e.,ðNÞ2 =hNi ¼ 1. This is directly obtained from theﬂuctuation-dissipation theorem ðNÞ2 =hNi ¼ nkB TT ,where n is the density of the gas, and T the isothermal
compressibility. For an ideal classical gas T ¼ 1=ðnkB TÞ,p

Ballistic expansion
p
2pF
x

x
2pF

FIG. 1. Phase space diagram of ballistic expansion of a harmonically trapped Fermi gas. Ballistic expansion conserves
phase space density and shears the initially occupied sphericalarea into an ellipse. In the center of the cloud, the local Fermi
momentum and the sharpness of the Fermi distribution are scaledby the same factor, keeping the ratio of local temperature to
Fermi energy constant. The same is true for all points in the
expanded cloud relative to their corresponding unscaled in-trap
points.

040402-1

Ó 2010 The American Physical Society

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PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS

and one retrieves Poissonian statistics. For an ideal Fermi
gas close to zero temperature with Fermi energy EF , T ¼
3=ð2nEF Þ, and the variance ðNÞ2 is suppressed below
Poissonian ﬂuctuations by the Pauli suppression factor
3kB T=ð2EF Þ. All number ﬂuctuations are thermal, as indicated by the proportionality of ðNÞ2 to the temperaturein the ﬂuctuation-dissipation theorem. Only for the idealclassical gas, where the compressibility diverges as 1=T,
one obtains Poissonian ﬂuctuations even at zerotemperature.
The counting of atoms in a probe volume can be donewith trapped atoms, or after ballistic expansion. Ballistic
expansion maintains the phase space density and therefore
the occupation statistics. Consequently, density ﬂuctuations are exactly rescaled in space by the ballistic expansion factors as shown in Fig. 1 [22,23]. Note that this
rescaling is a unique property of the harmonic oscillator
potential, so future work on density ﬂuctuations in opticallattices must employ in-trap imaging. For the present work,
we chose ballistic expansion. This choice increases thenumber of fully resolved bins due to optical resolution
and depth of ﬁeld, it allows adjusting the optimum opticaldensity by choosing an appropriate expansion time, and it
avoids image artifacts at high magniﬁcation.
We ﬁrst present our main results, and then discuss
important aspects of sample preparation, calibration ofabsorption cross section, data analysis and corrections forphoton shot noise. Figure 2(a) shows an absorption imageof an expanding cloud of fermionic atoms. The probe
volume, in which the number of atoms is counted, ischosen to be 26 m in the transverse directions, and extends through the entire cloud in the direction of the line ofsight. The large transverse size avoids averaging of ﬂuctuations due to ﬁnite optical resolution. From 85 such images, after careful normalization [24], the variance in themeasured atom number is determined as a function of
position. After subtracting the photon shot noise contribution, a 2D image of the atom number variance ðNÞ2 isobtained. For a Poissonian sample (with no suppression of
ﬂuctuations), this image would be identical to an absorption image showing the number of atoms per probe volume. This is close to the situation for the hottest cloud (thetemperature was limited by the trap depth), whereas thecolder clouds show a distinct suppression of the atom
number variance, especially in the center of the cloud
where the local T=TF is smallest.
In Fig. 3, proﬁles of the variance are compared totheoretical predictions [25,26]. Density ﬂuctuations atwave vector q are proportional to the structure factor
Sðq; TÞ. Since our probe volume (transverse size 26 m)
is much larger than the inverse Fermi wave vector of the
expanded cloud (1=qF ¼ 1:1 m), Sðq ¼ 0; TÞ has been
integrated along the line of sight for comparison with theexperimental proﬁles. Within the local density approximation, Sðq ¼ 0; TÞ at a given position in the trap is the
binomial variance nk ð1  nk Þ integrated over all momenta,
where the occupation probability nk ðk; ; TÞ is obtained
from the Fermi-Dirac distribution with a local chemical
potential  determined by the shape of the trap. Figure 4
shows the dependence of the atom number variance on
atom number for the hot and cold clouds. A statisticalanalysis of the data used in the ﬁgure is in [24].
The experiments were carried out with typically 2:5 
106 6 Li atoms per spin state conﬁned in a round crossed
dipole trap with radial and axial trap frequencies !r ¼
2  160 s1 and !z ¼ 2  230 s1 corresponding toan in-trap Fermi energy of EF ¼ kB  2:15 K. The sam2

/1000

FIG. 2 (color online). Comparison of density images to variance images. For Poissonian ﬂuctuations, the two images at agiven temperature should be identical. The variance images wereobtained by determining the local density ﬂuctuations from a setof 85 images taken under identical conditions. (a) Two dimensional image of the optical density of an ideal Fermi gas after
7 ms of ballistic expansion. The noise data were taken bylimiting the ﬁeld of view to the dashed region of interest,
allowing for faster image acquisition. (b) For the heated sample,
variance and density pictures are almost identical, implying only
modest deviation from Poissonian statistics. (c) Fermi suppression of density ﬂuctuations deep in the quantum degenerate
regime manifests itself through the difference between densityand variance picture. Especially in the center of the cloud, there
is a large suppression of density ﬂuctuations. The varianceimages were smoothed over 6  6 bins. The width of images(b) and (c) is 2 mm.

5 (a)

0

0

(b)

(c)

100
Position (bins)

FIG. 3. Comparison of observed variances (black dots) with atheoretical model (black line) and the observed atom number(gray), at three different temperatures (a, b, and c), showing 50,
40, and 15% suppression. Noise thermometry is implemented byﬁtting the observed ﬂuctuations, resulting in temperatures T=TF
of 0:23  :01, 0:33  :02, and 0:60  :02. This is in good
agreement with temperatures 0:21  :01, 0:31  :01, and 0:6 :1 obtained by ﬁtting the shape of the expanded cloud [32]. The
quoted uncertainties correspond to 1 standard deviation and are
purely statistical.

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Atom number variance

PRL 105, 040402 (2010)

bin, the atom number variance ðNÞ2 is obtained by subtracting the known photon shot noise from the variance inthe optical density ðODÞ2 [24]:

4000

1
1
2

ðNÞ2 ¼ ðODÞ2 
2
i
hN
hN
A
1
2i

2000

0

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0

2000

4000

Atom number

FIG. 4. Atom number variance vs average atom number. For
each spatial position, the average atom number per bin and its
variance were determined using 85 images. The ﬁlled and open
circles in the ﬁgure are averages of different spatial bin positions
with similar average atom number. For a hot cloud at T=TF ¼
0:6 (ﬁlled circles), the atom number variance is equal to theaverage atom number (dotted line, full Poissonian noise) in thespatial wings where the atom number is low. The deviation fromthe linear slope for a cold cloud at T=TF ¼ 0:21 (open circles) isdue to Pauli suppression of density ﬂuctuations. There is also
some suppression at the center of the hot cloud, where the atom
number is high. The solid and dashed lines are quadratic ﬁts forthe hot and cold clouds to guide the eye.

ple was prepared by laser cooling followed by sympathetic
cooling with 23 Na in a magnetic trap. 6 Li atoms in thehighest hyperﬁne state were transferred into the opticaltrap, and an equal mixture of atoms in the lowest two hyperﬁne states was produced. The sample was then evaporatively cooled by lowering the optical trapping potential ata magnetic bias ﬁeld B ¼ 320  5 G where a scattering
length of 300 Bohr radii ensured efﬁcient evaporation.
Finally, the magnetic ﬁeld was increased to B ¼ 520  5 G,
near the zero crossing of the scattering length. Absorption
images were taken after 7 ms of ballistic expansion.
We were careful to prepare all samples with similar
cloud sizes and central optical densities to ensure thatthey were imaged with the same effective cross section
and resolution. Hotter clouds were prepared by heating thecolder cloud using parametric modulation of the trapping
potential. For the hottest cloud this was done near 520 G toavoid excessive evaporation losses.
Atomic shot noise dominates over photon shot noise
only if each atom absorbs several photons. As a result,the absorption images were taken using the cycling transition to the lowest lying branch of the 2 P3=2 manifold.
However, the number of absorbed photons that could be
tolerated was severely limited by the acceleration of theatoms by the photon recoil, which Doppler shifts the atoms
out of resonance. Consequently, the effective absorption
cross section depends on the probe laser intensity andduration. To remove the need for nonlinear normalization
procedures, we chose a probe laser intensity corresponding
to an average of only 6 absorbed photons per atom during a
4 s exposure. At this intensity, about 12% of the 6 Li
saturation intensity, the measured optical density was
20% lower than its low-intensity value [24]. For each

(1)Here, hN1 iðhN2 iÞ are the average photon numbers per bin ofarea A in the image with (without) atoms and  is theabsorption cross section.
The absorption cross section is a crucial quantity in theconversion factor between the optical density and thenumber of detected atoms. For the cycling transition, theresonant absorption cross section is 2:14  1013 m2 .
Applying the measured 20% reduction mentioned above
leads to a value of 1:71  1013 m2 . This is an upper limit
to the cross section due to imperfections in polarization andresidual line broadening. An independent estimate of theeffective cross section of 1:48  1013 m2 was obtained bycomparing the integrated optical density to the number of
fermions necessary to ﬁll up the trap to the chemical
potential. The value of the chemical potential was obtained
from ﬁts to the ballistic expansion pictures that allowed
independent determination of the absolute temperature andthe fugacity of the gas. We could not precisely assess theaccuracy of this value of the cross section, since we did not
fully characterize the effect of a weak residual magnetic
ﬁeld curvature on trapping and on the ballistic expansion.
The most accurate value for the effective cross section wasdetermined from the observed atom shot noise itself. The
atom shot noise in the wings of the hottest cloud is
Poissonian, and this condition determines the absorption
cross section. Requiring that the slope of variance of theatom number ðNÞ2 vs atom number N is unity (see Fig. 4)
results in a value of ð1:50  0:12Þ  1013 m2 for theeffective cross section in good agreement with the two
above estimates.
The spatial volume for the atom counting needs to belarger than the optical resolution. For smaller bin sizes (i.e.,
small counting volumes), the noise is reduced since theﬁnite spatial resolution and depth of ﬁeld blur the absorption signal. In our setup, the smallest bin size without
blurring was determined by the depth of ﬁeld, since thesize of the expanded cloud was larger than the depth ofﬁeld associated with the diffraction limit of our opticalsystem. We determined the effective optical resolution bybinning the absorption data over more and more pixels of
the CCD camera, and determining the normalized central
variance ðNÞ2 =N vs bin size [24]. The normalized variance increased and saturated for bin sizes larger than
26 m (in the object plane), and this bin size was usedin the data analysis. We observe the same suppression
ratios for bin sizes as large as 40 m, corresponding tomore than 10 000 atoms per bin.
For a cold fermion cloud, the zero temperature structure
factor SðqÞ becomes unity for q > 2qF . This reﬂects the040402-3

PRL 105, 040402 (2010)

PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS

fact that momentum transfer above 2qF to any particle will
not be Pauli suppressed by occupation of the ﬁnal state. In
principle, this can be observed by using bin sizes smaller
than the Fermi wavelength, or by Fourier transforming the
spatial noise images. For large values of q, Pauli suppression of density ﬂuctuations should disappear, and the noise
should be Poissonian. However, our imaging system loses
its contrast before q  2qF [24].
Observation of density ﬂuctuations, through theﬂuctuation-dissipation theorem, determines the productof temperature and compressibility. It provides an absolute
thermometer, as demonstrated in Fig. 3 if the compressibility is known or is experimentally determined from theshape of the density proﬁle of the trapped cloud [17,27].
Because variance is proportional to temperature for T 
TF , noise thermometry maintains its sensitivity at very low
temperature, in contrast to the standard technique of ﬁtting
spatial proﬁles.
Density ﬂuctuations lead to Rayleigh scattering of light.
The differential cross section for scattering light of wave
vector k by an angle  is proportional to the structure factor
SðqÞ, where q ¼ 2k sinð=2Þ [26]. In this work, we havedirectly observed the Pauli suppression of density ﬂuctuations and therefore SðqÞ < 1, implying suppression of lightscattering at small angles (corresponding to values of q
inversely proportional to our bin size). How are the absorption images affected by this suppression? Since thephoton recoil was larger than the Fermi momentum of the
expanded cloud, large-angle light scattering is not suppressed. For the parameters of our experiment, we estimatethat the absorption cross section at the center of a T ¼ 0
Fermi cloud is reduced by only 0.3% due to Pauli blocking[28]. Although we have not directly observed Pauli suppression of light scattering, which has been discussed forover 20 years [28–30], by observing reduced density ﬂuctuations we have seen the underlying mechanism for suppression of light scattering.
In conclusion, we have established a sensitive techniquefor determining atomic shot noise and observed the suppression of density ﬂuctuations in a quantum degenerate
ideal Fermi gas. This technique is promising for thermometry of strongly correlated many-body systems and forobserving phase-transitions or cross-overs to incompressible quantum phases.
We acknowledge Joseph Thywissen and Markus Greiner
for useful discussions. This work was supported by NSF
and the Ofﬁce of Naval Research, AFOSR (through the
MURI program), and under Army Research Ofﬁce grant
no. W911NF-07-1-0493 with funds from the DARPA
Optical Lattice Emulator program.
Note added in proof.—Results similar to ours are reported in Ref. [31].

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23 JULY 2010

[1] W. D. Oliver, J. Kim, R. C. Liu, and Y. Yamamoto, Science
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418, 392 (2002).
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arXiv:0901.0606.
[13] C. S. Chuu et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 95, 260403 (2005).
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Rev. Lett. 104, 120402 (2010).
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[17] N. Gemelke, X. Zhang, C. L. Hung, and C. Chin, Nature(London) 460, 995 (2009).
[18] M. Greiner (unpublished).
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[24] See supplementary material at http://link.aps.org/
supplemental/10.1103/PhysRevLett.105.040402 for additional details.
[25] Y. Castin, in Proceedings of the International School ofPhysics Enrico Fermi, Course CLXIV, edited by M.
Inguscio, W. Ketterle, and C. Salomon (IOS,
Amsterdam, 2008).
[26] D. Pines and P. Nozières, The Theory of Quantum Liquids(Addison-Wesley, MA, 1988), Vol. 1.
[27] Q. Zhou and T. L. Ho, arXiv:0908.3015.
[28] A. Görlitz, A. P. Chikkatur, and W. Ketterle, Phys. Rev. A
63, 041601(R) (2001).
[29] K. Helmerson, M. Xiao, and D. E. Pritchard, inInternational Quantum Electronics Conference 1990,
Book of Abstracts, econf QTHH4 (1990).
[30] B. Shuve and J. H. Thywissen, J. Phys. B 43, 015301(2010). (and references therein)[31] T. Mueller et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 040401(2010).
[32] W. Ketterle and M. W. Zwierlein, in Proceedings of theInternational School of Physics Enrico Fermi, Course
CLXIV, edited by M. Inguscio, W. Ketterle, and C.
Salomon (IOS, Amsterdam, 2008).

040402-4

Appendix B
Speckle Imaging of Spin
Fluctuations in a Strongly
Interacting Fermi Gas
This appendix contains a printout of Phys. Rev. Lett. 106, 010402 (2011): Christian
Sanner, Edward J. Su, Aviv Keshet, Wujie Huang, Jonathon Gillen, Ralf Gommers,
and Wolfgang Ketterle, Speckle Imaging of Spin Fluctuations in a Strongly Interacting
Fermi Gas.

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PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS

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7 JANUARY 2011

Speckle Imaging of Spin Fluctuations in a Strongly Interacting Fermi Gas
Christian Sanner, Edward J. Su, Aviv Keshet, Wujie Huang, Jonathon Gillen, Ralf Gommers, and Wolfgang Ketterle
MIT-Harvard Center for Ultracold Atoms, Research Laboratory of Electronics, and Department of Physics,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge Massachusetts 02139, USA(Received 8 October 2010; revised manuscript received 10 December 2010; published 6 January 2011)
Spin ﬂuctuations and density ﬂuctuations are studied for a two-component gas of strongly interacting
fermions along the Bose-Einstein condensate-BCS crossover. This is done by in situ imaging of dispersive
speckle patterns. Compressibility and magnetic susceptibility are determined from the measured ﬂuctuations. This new sensitive method easily resolves a tenfold suppression of spin ﬂuctuations below shotnoise due to pairing, and can be applied to novel magnetic phases in optical lattices.
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.106.010402

PACS numbers: 05.30.Fk, 03.75.Ss, 67.85.Lm

One frontier in the ﬁeld of ultracold atoms is the realization of quantum systems with strong interactions andstrong correlations. Many properties of strongly correlated
systems cannot be deduced from mean density distributions. This has drawn interest toward novel ways of probing cold atoms, e.g., via rf spectroscopy [1,2], Bragg andRaman scattering [3], interferometric methods [4,5], andby recording density correlations [6–8]. Further insight
into quantum systems is obtained by looking not only at
expectation values, but also at ﬂuctuations. Several recent
studies looked at density ﬂuctuations, either of bosons
around the Mott insulator transition [9–11], or of a gas ofnoninteracting fermions [12,13].
In this Letter, we extend the study of ﬂuctuations ofultracold gases in several ways. First, we introduce thetechnique of speckle imaging as a simple and highly
sensitive method to characterize ﬂuctuations. Second, weapply it to a two-component Fermi gas across the BoseEinstein condensate (BEC)-BCS crossover. Third, we directly measure ﬂuctuations in the magnetization, i.e., thedifference of the densities in the two different spin components, bypassing the need to measure the individual
densities separately.
Our work is motivated by the prospect of realizing wideclasses of spin Hamiltonians using a two-component gas ofultracold atoms in an optical lattice [14,15]. An important
thermodynamic quantity to characterize two-component
systems is the spin susceptibility, which provides a clear
signature of phase transitions or crossovers involving theonset of pairing or magnetic order [16–19]. At a ferromagnetic phase transition the susceptibility diverges, whereas
in a transition to a paired or antiferromagnetic phase thesusceptibility becomes exponentially small in the ratio of
the pair binding energy (or antiferromagnetic gap) to thetemperature. The ﬂuctuation-dissipation theorem relates
response functions to ﬂuctuations, consequently the spin
susceptibility can be determined by measuring the ﬂuctuations in the relative density of the two spin components.
In our experiment, we image the atom clouds using lightdetuned from resonance so that each atom’s real
0031-9007=11=106(1)=010402(4)polarizability, which contributes to the refractive index, ismuch larger than its imaginary polarizability, which contributes to absorption. Since the detunings for the two spinstates are different, spin ﬂuctuations lead to ﬂuctuations in
the local refractive index, resulting in phase shifts of theimaging light that vary randomly in space. We measurethese phase shifts by imaging the resulting speckle
patterns.
These speckle patterns are created by propagation,
which converts the spatially varying phase shifts of theimaging light into an intensity pattern on our detector
without the use of a phase plate. Spin and density ﬂuctuations occur on all spatial scales down to the interatomic
separation; the smallest observable ﬂuctuations have awavelength equal to the imaging system’s maximum resolution. In our system that length has a Rayleigh range, andhence a depth of ﬁeld, smaller than the cloud size, so therecorded image is necessarily modiﬁed by propagation
effects. Propagation mixes up amplitude and phase signals[Fig. 1]. This can be easily seen in the case of a phasegrating, which creates an interference pattern further
downstream; after propagating for a distance equal to theRayleigh range of the grating spacing, the imprinted phaseis converted into an amplitude pattern. This feature of
speckle makes our imaging technique both simple androbust. It is insensitive against defocusing, and allows us
to image ﬂuctuations of the real part of the refractive index(i.e., a phase signal) without a phase plate or other Fourier
optics.
Similar physics is responsible for laser speckle when arough surface scatters light with random phases [20], andoccurs when a Bose-Einstein condensate with phase ﬂuctuations develops density ﬂuctuations during expansion[21], or when a phase-contrast signal is turned into an
amplitude signal by deliberate defocusing [22].
The experiments were performed with typically 106 6 Li
atoms in each of the two lowest hyperﬁne states j1i and j2i
conﬁned in an optical dipole trap oriented at 45 to theimaging axis with radial and axial trap frequencies !r ¼
2  108:9ð6Þ s1 and !z ¼ 2  7:75ð3Þ s1 . For the010402-1

Ó 2011 The American Physical Society

PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS

Transmission image variance (arb. units)

PRL 106, 010402 (2011)

d

2f

2f

0
0

50

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7 JANUARY 2011

100

150

Defocus distance d (μm)

FIG. 1. Simulation of propagation effects after light has passed
through a Poissonian phase noise object. Shown are the variancemeasured in the amplitude or in-phase quadrature (black line)
and the out-of-phase quadrature (gray line) as a function of
defocus distance, for an imaging system with a numericalaperture of 0.14. Within a distance less than 5% of our cloudsize, noise becomes equally distributed between the two quadratures and the variances in transmission and phase-contrast
images become the same. (Top inset) For small phase ﬂuctuations, an in-focus phase noise object gives no amplitude contrast,
but when it is out of focus it does. (Bottom inset) Sample
intensity patterns for a defocused phase object.

samples imaged at 527 G, the sample preparation was
similar to that described in [13], with a temperature of
0:14ð1ÞTF . The samples imaged at other magnetic ﬁelds
were prepared in a similar fashion, except that evaporation
was performed at 1000 G to a ﬁnal temperature of T ¼
0:13ð1ÞTF before ramping the magnetic ﬁeld over 1.5 s to
its ﬁnal value. The temperature at 1000 G was determinedby ﬁtting a noninteracting Thomas-Fermi distribution intime of ﬂight. The temperatures at other points in the
crossover were related to that value assuming an isentropic
ramp, using calculations presented in [23]. Using thismethod we obtain temperatures of 0:13ð1ÞTF at 915 G,
0:19ð1ÞTF at 830 G, and 0:19ð3ÞTF at 790 G where additional evaporation was performed to achieve a central
optical density similar to that at the other magnetic ﬁelds.
The extent of the cloud along the imaging direction was
135 m, much larger than the Rayleigh range of 8 m forour imaging system with a NA of 0.14.
The superﬂuid to normal phase boundary was determined by measuring condensate fraction [Fig. 2] using
the standard magnetic ﬁeld sweep technique [24,25]. For
this, the magnetic ﬁeld was rapidly switched to 570 G totransfer atom pairs to more deeply bound pairs (molecules)
which survive ballistic expansion. For resonant imaging of
the molecules, the ﬁeld was ramped back to 790 G over
10 ms. The condensate fraction was determined by ﬁtting
the one-dimensional density proﬁles with a bimodal
distribution.

FIG. 2. Measured condensate fraction as a function of dimensionless interaction strength 1=ðkF aÞ. Insets show typical images
from which the condensate fraction was extracted by ﬁtting abimodal distribution. The dashed line is a sigmoidal ﬁt to guidethe eye.

As previously described, propagation converts spatial
ﬂuctuations in the refractive index into amplitude ﬂuctuations on the detector. For different choices of the probe
light frequency, the two atomic spin states will have different real polarizabilities and the local refractive index will
be a different linear combination of the (line-of-sight integrated) column densities n1 and n2 . To measure the susceptibility we choose a probe light frequency exactly
between the resonances for states j1i and j2i, so that thereal polarizabilities are opposite and the refractive index is
proportional to the magnetization (n1  n2 ). The intensity
ﬂuctuations on the detector after propagation are consequently proportional to the ﬂuctuations in magnetization.
Since a refractive index proportional to (n1 þ n2 ) occurs
only in the limit of inﬁnite detuning, we measure theﬂuctuations in the total density by exploiting the fact thatthe ﬂuctuations in total density can be inferred from theﬂuctuations in two different linear combinations of n1 andn2 . For convenience, we obtain the second linear combination using a detuning that has the same value, but opposite sign for state j2i, and therefore three times the value forstate j1i. With this detuning, we record images of the
ﬂuctuations in (n1 =3 þ n2 ).
In principle, this information can be obtained by taking
separate absorption images on resonance for states j1i andj2i. However, the images would have to be taken on a timescale much faster than that of atomic motion and there
would be increased technical noise from the subtraction oflarge numbers. The use of dispersive imaging has the
additional advantage over absorption in that the numberof scattered photons in the forward direction is enhanced
by superradiance. As a result, for the same amount ofheating, a larger number of signal photons can be collected[26]. This is crucial for measuring atomic noise, which
requires the collection of several signal photons per atom.
The choice of detuning between the transitions of the twostates has the important feature that the index of refraction
for an equal mixture ﬂuctuates around zero, avoiding any
lensing and other distortions of the probe beam. This is not

010402-2

The observed ratio of 2 =2þ ¼ 1:56ð14Þ reﬂects excess
noise contributing to 2þ due to residual systematic dispersive effects and is accounted for by setting c0 =c ¼
pﬃﬃﬃﬃﬃﬃﬃﬃﬃﬃﬃﬃﬃﬃﬃﬃﬃﬃ
1:8=1:56. For high temperatures, the atomic noise of thenoninteracting gas approaches shot noise; for lower temperatures we observe a reduction in noise due to Pauliblocking as in our previous work [13]. With our new
method, we easily discern spin ﬂuctuations with a varianceof less than 10% of atom shot noise.
The ﬂuctuation-dissipation theorem connects the variances ½ðN1  N2 Þ2 and ½ðN1 þ N2 Þ2 to the susceptibility~ and the compressibility ~ via ½ðN1  N2 Þ2 ¼~ and ½ðN1 þ N2 Þ2 ¼ 3N=2ðT=TF Þ~
3N=2ðT=TF Þ withN ¼ N1 þ N2 and T=TF being the temperature measured
in units of the Fermi temperature TF . Recomposing thevariances from the two experimentally accessible
linear combinations these relations become 2 =Nc2 ¼~and
9=42þ =Nc02  1=42 =Nc2 ¼
3=2ðT=TF Þ
3=2ðT=TF Þ~
. The constants c and c0 are determined using
the noise measurements at 527 G for a noninteracting~¼
Fermi gas for which ~ ¼ 1 þ OððT=TF Þ2 Þ. This
analysis ignores line-of-sight integration corrections.
Figure 4 shows the spin susceptibility, the compressibility, and the ratio between the two quantities for the interacting mixtures as the interaction strength is varied throughthe BEC-BCS crossover. The susceptibility and compressibility reproduce the expected qualitative behavior: for the
sample at unitarity, where the transition temperature is
sufﬁciently high that a sizable portion of the sample issuperﬂuid, and for the sample on the BEC side, the spin
susceptibility is strongly suppressed relative to the compressibility. This reﬂects the fact that the atoms form bound
1/kF a1.2

100 μm8

1/(kF a)= ∞

6
4
2
0

5

10
15
20
25
Pixels (1 pixel = 2.6 μm)

30

1/kF a
-1.0

−4

x 10

∞

-1.5

1.0 0

1/kF a
-1.0

∞

-1.5

1.0 0

-1.0

-1.5

4

1.0
0.8
3

0.6

0.0

2

1

0.2

1/(kF a)= 0

3

0.6
0.4

0.4

4

κ / κ0

χ/κ

0.8

0.2

5

OD Variance

OD Variance

−4

1.0 0

1.0

Optical Density

0.6
0.4
0.2
0

∞

χ / χ0the case for other choices of detuning, and indeed, we
observe some excess noise in those images (see below).
At the detunings chosen, 10% residual attenuation is observed, some due to off-resonant absorption, some due todispersive scattering of light out of the imaging system bysmall scale density ﬂuctuations. The contribution to thevariance of the absorption signal relative to the dispersive
signal scales as ð2Þ2 =2  0:006 and can be neglected in
the interpretation of the data.
The noise analysis procedure was nearly identical to that
performed in [13]. A high-pass ﬁlter with a cutoff wavelength of 13 m was applied to each image of the cloud tominimize the effect of ﬂuctuations in total atom number.
Then, for each pixel position, the variance of the opticaldensities at that position in the different images was computed. After the subtraction of the contribution of photon
shot noise, the resulting variance image reﬂects the noise
contribution from the atoms.
The goal of our noise measurements is to determine atvarious interaction strengths the normalized susceptibility~ ¼ =0 and compressibility ~ ¼ =0 , where 0 ¼
3n=2EF and 0 ¼ 3=2nEF are the susceptibility and compressibility of a zero-temperature noninteracting Fermi gas
with the same total density n and Fermi energy EF . Before
studying spin ﬂuctuations through the BEC-BCS crossover,
we therefore calibrate our measurement by measuring thespin ﬂuctuations in a noninteracting mixture, realized at
527 G where the scattering length between the two statesvanishes. Figure 3 shows raw proﬁles of the variances 2
and 2þ measured at the two detunings. These ﬂuctuationsin the speckle pattern are proportional to number ﬂuctuations in the speciﬁed probe volume V: 2 ¼ ½cðN1 
N2 Þ2 and 2þ ¼ ½c0 ðN1 =3 þ N2 Þ2 . In these relations c
and c0 are factors which have to be calibrated. Without
interactions, N1 and N2 are uncorrelated, and one predicts½ðN1  N2 Þ2 =½ðN1 =3 þ N2 Þ2 ¼ 2=½1 þ ð1=3Þ2  ¼ 1:8.

x 10

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PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS

PRL 106, 010402 (2011)

0.0
527

800

900

1000

0
527

800

900

1000

527

800

900

1000

Magnetic Field (G)Magnetic Field (G)Magnetic Field (G)

(a)

(b)

(c)

2
1
0

5

10
15
20 25
30
Pixels (1 pixel = 2.6 μm)

FIG. 3 (color online). (Top panel) Example speckle noise
image, with white box indicating analysis region. (Bottom
panels) Noise data for noninteracting (left panel) and resonantlyinteracting (right panel) cold clouds, showing 2 (black dots)and 2þ (gray dots). Solid lines are Gaussian ﬁts to the data, anddotted lines illustrate the expected full Poissonian noise for thecorresponding quantities based on density determined from offresonant absorption.

FIG. 4. (a) The ratio =, (b) the normalized susceptibility
=0 , and (c) the normalized compressibility =0 in the BECBCS crossover. The variances derived from sequences of images
are converted into thermodynamic variables using the measured
temperatures and a calibration factor determined from the noninteracting gas. The vertical line indicates the onset region ofsuperﬂuidity, as determined via condensate fraction measurements. The curves show theoretical zero temperature estimates
based on 1st (dotted) and 2nd order (solid) perturbative formulas
obtained from Landau’s Fermi-liquid theory integrated along theline of sight, and results from a Monte Carlo calculation (dashed)
for the compressibility in a homogeneous system [32].

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PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS

molecules or generalized Cooper pairs; the spin susceptibility should be exponentially small in the binding energy,
while the enhanced compressibility reﬂects the bosoniccharacter of the molecular condensate. At 915 G and1000 G, where the sample is above the superﬂuid criticaltemperature, the susceptibility is larger but still below its
value for the noninteracting gas, reﬂecting the persistenceof pair correlations even in the normal phase of the gas.
Above the Feshbach resonance, for attractive interactions, we compare our results to ﬁrst and second order
perturbation theory in the small parameter kF a. This
ignores the instability to the superﬂuid BCS state at exponentially small temperatures. The perturbation theory is
formulated for the Landau parameters for a Fermi liquid[16,27]. The susceptibility and compressibility are givenby 0 = ¼ ð1 þ F0a Þm=m , 0 = ¼ ð1 þ F0s Þm=m ,where m ¼ mð1 þ F1s =3Þ is the effective mass, and Fls ,Fla are the lth angular momentum symmetric and antisymmetric Landau parameters, respectively. Although the experimental data are taken for relatively strong interactions
outside the range of validity for a perturbative description,
the predictions still capture the trends observed in thenormal phase above the Feshbach resonance. This showsthat more accurate measurements of the susceptibility, anda careful study of its temperature dependence, are required
to reveal the presence of a possible pseudogap phase.
In our analysis we have neglected quantum ﬂuctuations
which are present even at zero temperature [16,28]. They
are related to the large-q static structure factor SðqÞ measured in [29] and proportional to the surface of the probe
volume, scaling with N 2=3 logðNÞ. For ﬂuctuations of thetotal density, their relative contribution is roughly
N 1=3 =ðT=TF Þ, and at most 40% for our experimental
parameters. Attractive interactions and pairing suppress
both the thermal and quantum spin ﬂuctuations, but it is
not known at what temperature quantum ﬂuctuations become essential.
Spin susceptibilities can also be obtained from the equation of state which can be determined by analyzing the
average density proﬁles of imbalanced mixtures [30]. Our
method has the advantage of being applicable without
imbalance, and requires only local thermal equilibrium.
Moreover ﬂuctuations can be compared with susceptibilities determined from the equation of state to perform
absolute, model-independent thermometry for strongly interacting systems [31].
In conclusion, we have demonstrated a new technique todetermine spin susceptibilities of ultracold atomic gases
using speckle imaging. We have validated and calibrated
this technique using an ideal Fermi gas and applied it to astrongly interacting Fermi gas in the BEC-BCS crossover.
This technique is directly applicable to studying pairingand magnetic ordering of two-component gases in opticallattices.

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We acknowledge Qijin Chen and Kathy Levin for providing calculations of condensate fraction, Gregory
Astrakharchik and Stefano Giorgini for providing
Monte Carlo results for the compressibility, Sandro
Stringari and Alessio Recati for discussions, and Yong-il
Shin for experimental assistance. This work was supported
by NSF and the Ofﬁce of Naval Research, AFOSR(through the MURI program), and under Army ResearchOfﬁce Grant No. W911NF-07-1-0493 with funds from the
DARPA Optical Lattice Emulator program.

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Giorgini, Phys. Rev. Lett. 93, 200404 (2004).

010402-4

Appendix C
Correlations and Pair Formation ina Repulsively Interacting Fermi
Gas
This appendix contains a printout of Phys. Rev. Lett. 108, 240404 (2012): Christian
Sanner, Edward J. Su, Wujie Huang, Aviv Keshet, Jonathon Gillen, and Wolfgang
Ketterle, Correlations and Pair Formation in a Repulsively Interacting Fermi Gas.

127

PRL 108, 240404 (2012)

week ending
15 JUNE 2012PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS

Correlations and Pair Formation in a Repulsively Interacting Fermi Gas
Christian Sanner, Edward J. Su, Wujie Huang, Aviv Keshet, Jonathon Gillen, and Wolfgang Ketterle
MIT-Harvard Center for Ultracold Atoms, Research Laboratory of Electronics, and Department of Physics,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA(Received 9 August 2011; published 13 June 2012)
A degenerate Fermi gas is rapidly quenched into the regime of strong effective repulsion near a
Feshbach resonance. The spin ﬂuctuations are monitored using speckle imaging and, contrary to several
theoretical predictions, the samples remain in the paramagnetic phase for an arbitrarily large scattering
length. Over a wide range of interaction strengths a rapid decay into bound pairs is observed over times on
the order of 10@=EF , preventing the study of equilibrium phases of strongly repulsive fermions. Our worksuggests that a Fermi gas with strong short-range repulsive interactions does not undergo a ferromagnetic
phase transition.
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.108.240404

PACS numbers: 03.75.Ss, 67.85.Lm, 75.10.Lp

0031-9007=12=108(24)=240404(5)time evolution of the system [19,20]. Theoretical studies
concluded that the pairing instability is somewhat fasterthan the ferromagnetic instability [21]. The second major
result of this paper is to show that pair formation occurs
indeed on a very short time scale. The measured time
constant of 10@=EF (where EF is the Fermi energy) indicates that the metastable repulsive state will never reachequilibrium and that, even in a metastable sense, a Fermi
gas with strong short-range repulsive interactions does notexist. The fast pair formation could not be observed previously due to limited time resolution [3]. Instead, a muchslower second phase in the conversion of atoms to pairs
was observed leading to the wrong conclusion that theunpaired atoms have a much longer lifetime.

2

Energy / atom (E F)

Many-body systems can often be modeled using contact
interactions, greatly simplifying the analysis while maintaining the essence of the phenomenon to be studied. Suchmodels are almost exactly realized with ultracold gases dueto the large ratio of the de Broglie wavelength to the rangeof the interatomic forces [1]. For itinerant fermions withstrong short-range repulsion, textbook calculations predicta ferromagnetic phase transition—the so-called Stoner instability [2].
Here we investigate this system using an ultracold gas offermionic lithium atoms, and observe that the ferromagnetic phase transition does not occur. A previous experimental study [3] employing a different apparatus foundindirect evidence for a ferromagnetic phase, but did notobserve the expected domain structure, possibly due to thelack of imaging resolution. Here we address this shortcoming by analyzing density and spin density ﬂuctuations
via speckle imaging [4]. When spin domains of m atoms
form, the spin density variance will increase by a factor ofm [5], even if individual domains are not resolved. One
main result of this paper is the absence of such a signiﬁcant
increase which seems to exclude the possibility of a ferromagnetic state in the studied system.
The Stoner model assumes a two-component Fermi gas
with a repulsive short-range interaction described by asingle parameter, the scattering length. The predicted
phase transition to a ferromagnetic state requires large
repulsive scattering lengths on the order of the interatomic
spacing. They can be realized only by short-range attractive potentials with a loosely bound state with binding
energy @2 =ðma2 Þ, with m being the atomic mass and abeing the scattering length [6]. However, as shown schematically in Fig. 1, the repulsive gas is then by necessity
only metastable with respect to decay into the bound state.
Many theoretical studies of a Fermi gas with strong shortrange repulsive interactions assume that the metastablestate is sufﬁciently long-lived [7–18]. In recent Monte
Carlo simulations, the paired state is projected out in the

B
1

A

0
magnetic
field-1

speckle trap
image
off
B
A

350 μs

-2

t

10

5

0

-5

-10

Interaction parameter (1/k Fa)

FIG. 1. Diagram showing energy levels and timing of theexperiment. The upper (repulsive) and lower (attractive) branchenergies, near a Feshbach resonance, are connected by threebody collisions. In our experiment, we quickly jump from aweakly interacting Fermi gas (A) to a strongly interacting one(B) with a rapid magnetic ﬁeld change. The evolution of correlations and domains and the molecule formation (population of
the lower branch) are studied as a function of hold time t.
Adapted from [42].

240404-1

Ó 2012 American Physical Society

week ending
15 JUNE 2012PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS

The experiments were carried out with typically
4:2  105 6 Li atoms in each of the two lower spin states
j1i and j2i conﬁned in an optical dipole trap with radial andaxial trap frequencies !r ¼ 2  100ð1Þ s1 and !z ¼
2  9:06ð25Þ s1 . The sample was evaporatively cooled
at a magnetic bias ﬁeld B ¼ 320 G, identical to the procedure described in [22]. Then the magnetic ﬁeld was slowly
ramped to 730 G (kF a ¼ 0:35) in 500 ms. The fraction of
atoms being converted to molecules during the ramp was
measured (see below for method) to be below 5%. The
temperature of the cloud was typically 0:23ð3ÞTF at 527 Gwith a Fermi energy of EF ¼ kB TF ¼ h  6:1 kHz. After
rapidly switching the magnetic ﬁeld from 730 G to the ﬁnal
value in less than 350 s, spin ﬂuctuations were measured
by speckle imaging. Optionally an appropriate rf pulse wasapplied directly before imaging to rotate the spin orientation along the measurement axis. Due to the use of 20 cm
diameter coils outside the vacuum chamber, the inductanceof the magnet coils was 330 H and the fast switching
was accomplished by rapidly discharging capacitors
charged to 500 V.
Experimentally, spin ﬂuctuations are measured using thetechnique of speckle imaging described in Ref. [4]. For an
appropriate choice of detuning, an incident laser beam
experiences a shift of the refractive index proportional tothe difference between the local populations of the two
spin states N1 and N2 . Spin ﬂuctuations create spatial
ﬂuctuations in the local refractive index and imprint aphase pattern into the incoming light, which is then converted into an amplitude pattern during propagation. The
resulting spatial ﬂuctuations in the probe laser intensity areused to determine the spin ﬂuctuations in the sample.
In Ref. [4] we prepared samples on the lower branch of
the Feshbach resonance, where positive values of kF a
correspond to a gas of weakly bound molecules. At
kF a ¼ 1:2, we observed a sixfold suppression of spin
ﬂuctuations and a fourfold enhancement of density ﬂuctuations. Typical ﬂuctuations in the speckle images of a noninteracting Fermi gas at T ¼ 0:23TF amount to 5% of theaverage optical signal per pixel, corresponding to about
50% of Poissonian ﬂuctuations. Those ﬂuctuations are
modiﬁed by factors between 0.2 and 1.6 due to pairingand interactions.
In this study, on the upper branch of the Feshbach resonance, the situation is reversed. For unbound atoms, as theinteraction strength increases, the two spin components
should develop stronger and stronger anticorrelations andenhanced spin ﬂuctuations. Previous experimental work [3]and several theoretical studies [10,11,13–15,18,23] predicteda phase transition to a ferromagnetic state where the magnetic
susceptibility and therefore the spin ﬂuctuations diverge.
Recent Monte Carlo simulations [19] predict such a divergence around kF a ¼ 0:83. We therefore expected an increase of spin ﬂuctuations by one or several orders ofmagnitude, related to the size of magnetic domains.

Figure 2 shows the observed spin ﬂuctuations enhancement compared to the non-interacting cloud at 527 G. The
variance enhancement factor reaches its maximum value of
1.6 immediately after the quench, decreasing during the
2 ms afterward. The absence of a dramatic increase showsthat no domains form and that the sample remains in theparamagnetic phase throughout. Similar observations weremade for a wide range of interaction strengths and wait
times. Note that ﬁrst-order perturbation theory [24] predicts an increase of the susceptibility by a factor of 1.5 at
kF a ¼ 0:5 and by a factor of 2 at kFa ¼ 0:8 (i.e., no
dramatic increase for kF a < 1). Therefore, our data show
no evidence for the Fermi gas approaching the Stonerinstability.
Before we can fully interpret these ﬁndings, we have totake into account the decay of the atomic sample on theupper branch of the Feshbach resonance into bound pairs.
We characterize the pair formation by comparing the total
number of atoms and molecules Na þ 2Nmol (determinedby taking an absorption image after ballistic expansion athigh magnetic ﬁeld where molecules and atoms have thesame absorption resonance) to the number of free atoms(determined by rapidly sweeping the magnetic ﬁeld to 5 G
before releasing the atoms and imaging the cloud, converting pairs into deeply bound molecules that are completely
shifted out of resonance) [25].
The time evolution of the molecule production (Fig. 3)
shows two regimes of distinct behavior. For times less than
1 ms, we observe a considerable number of atoms converted into molecules, while the total number Na þ 2Nmol
remains constant. The initial drop in atom number becomeslarger as we increase the ﬁnal magnetic ﬁeld, and saturates
at around 50% near the Feshbach resonance.
We attribute this fast initial decay in atom number torecombination [26,27] into the weakly bound moleculark Fa 0Relative spin fluctuations

PRL 108, 240404 (2012)

1.6

0.65 1.14 2.27 ∞

(a)

1.6

1.4

1.4

1.2

1.2

1

1
527 750800

Magnetic field (G)

850

(b)

0

1

2

3

Hold time (ms)FIG. 2. Spin ﬂuctuations (a) after 350 s as a function ofmagnetic ﬁeld and (b) on resonance as a function of hold timescaled to the value measured at 527 G. Even at strong repulsive
interactions, the measured spin ﬂuctuations are barely enhanced,
indicating only short-range correlations and no domain formation. The spin ﬂuctuations were determined for square bins of
2:6 m, each containing on average 1000 atoms per spin state.

240404-2

PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS

PRL 108, 240404 (2012)
Hold time [ms]
20

40

60

80

100

120

140

1

0.8

0.8

0.6

0.6

0.4

0.4

0.2

0.2

0

0

Molecule Fraction

Surviving fraction

1

0Surviving fraction

1
0.8
0.6
0.4
0

1

2

3

4

5

6

Hold time [ms]FIG. 3 (color online). Characterization of molecule formation
at short and long hold times, and at different values of theinteraction strength. The closed symbols, circles (black) at
790 G with kF a ¼ 1:14, squares (blue) at 810 G with kF a ¼
2:27 and diamonds (red) at 818 G with kF a ¼ 3:5 represent thenormalized number of free atoms, the open symbols the total
number of atoms including those bound in Feshbach molecules(open circles at 790 G with kF a ¼ 1:14). The crosses (green)show the molecule fraction. The characteristic time scale is set
by the Fermi time @=EF ¼ 43 s, calculated with a cloud
averaged Fermi energy.

state. We obtain an atom loss rate N_ a =Na ¼ 250 s1
at 790 G in the ﬁrst 1 ms after the magnetic ﬁeld switch.
Assuming a three-body process we estimate the rate
coefﬁcient L3 at this ﬁeld to be 3:9  1022 cm6 s1 ,though the interaction is already sufﬁciently strong for
many-body effects to be signiﬁcant. For stronger interactions, about 30% of atom loss occurs already during therelevant 100 s of ramping through the strongly interacting region, indicating a lower bound of around 3  103 s1
for the loss rate which is 13% of the inverse Fermi time
EF =@, calculated with a cloud averaged Fermi energy.
After the ﬁrst millisecond, the molecule formation rate
slows down, by an order of magnitude at a magnetic
ﬁeld of 790 G (and even more dramatically at higher
ﬁelds) when it reaches about 50%. It seems likely thatthe molecule fraction has reached a quasi-equilibrium
value at the local temperature, which is larger than theinitial temperature due to local heating accompanying
the molecule formation. Reference [28] presents a simple
model for the equilibrium between atoms and molecules(ignoring strong interactions). For phase space densities
around unity and close to resonance, the predicted
molecule fraction is 0.5, in good agreement with ourobservations [29].

week ending
15 JUNE 2012For longer time scales (hundred milliseconds) we observe a steady increase of the molecule fraction to 90% for
the longest hold time. This occurs due to continuous
evaporation which cools down the system and shifts theatom-molecule equilibrium towards high molecule fractions. During the same time scale, a slow loss in both
atom number and total number is observed caused byinelastic collisions (vibrational relaxation of molecules)
and evaporation loss.
Is the rapid conversion into molecules necessarily fasterthan the evolution of ferromagnetic domains? Our answer
is tentatively yes. First, for strong interactions with kF a
around 1, one expects both instabilities (pair formation andStoner instability) to have rates which scale with the Fermi
energy EF and therefore with n2=3 . Therefore, one cannotchange the competition between the instabilities by working at higher or lower densities. According to Ref. [21] thefastest unstable modes for domain formation have a wave
vector q  kF =2 and grow at a rate of up to EF =4@ when
the cloud is quenched sufﬁciently far beyond the criticalinteraction strength. Unstable modes with such wave vectors will develop ‘‘domains’’ of half a wavelength or size
¼ =q ¼ 2=kF containing 5 atoms per spin state in a
volume 3 . This rate is comparable to the observed conversion rates into pairs of 0:13EF . Therefore, at best,‘‘domains’’ of a few particles could form, but before they
can grow further and prevent the formation of pairs (in afully polarized state), rapid pair formation takes over andpopulates the lower branch of the Feshbach resonance.
Based on our observations and these arguments, it seems
that it is not possible to realize ferromagnetism with strong
short range interaction, and therefore the basic Stonermodel cannot be realized in nature.
One possibility to suppress pair formation is provided bynarrow Feshbach resonances. Here the pairs have dominantly closed channel character and therefore a muchsmaller overlap matrix element with the free atoms.
However, narrow Feshbach resonances are characterized
by a long effective range and do not realize the Stonermodel which assumes short-range interactions. Other interesting topics for future research on ferromagnetism andpair formation include the effects of dimensionality[30,31], spin imbalance [32,33], mass imbalance [34],lattice and band structure [35,36].
We now discuss whether ferromagnetism is possible
after atoms and molecules have rapidly established local
equilibrium. In other words, starting at T ¼ 0, one could
heat up the fully paired and superﬂuid system and create agas of atomic quasiparticles which are similar to free atoms
with repulsive interactions. Density and temperature of theatoms are now coupled. It is likely that such a state isrealized in our experiments after a few ms following thequench, until evaporative cooling converts the system intoa molecular condensate over  100 ms. The possibility
that such a quasiparticle gas could become ferromagnetic

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PRL 108, 240404 (2012)PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS

has not been discussed in the literature. Our experiments do
not reveal any major increase in spin ﬂuctuations which
seems to exclude a ferromagnetic state. In the simplest
picture, we could regard the atomic quasiparticles as free
atoms, and then apply the Stoner model to them.
Ferromagnetic domain formation is analogous to phaseseparation between the two spin components [3]. Since
dimers interact equally with the two spin components, one
might expect that even a noticeable dimer fraction should
not suppress the tendency of the atomic gas to form domains. Therefore, in a simple model, one may neglect
dimer-atom interactions.
If the Stoner model applies to this quasiparticle gas, thenext question is whether the temperature is low enoughfor the ferromagnetic phase transition. Available theoretical treatments do not predict an exact maximum transition
temperature to the ferromagnetic state and obtain an
unphysical divergence for large scattering lengths. Since
the only energy scale is the Fermi temperature, one would
expect a transition temperature which is a fraction of
the Fermi temperature [37], higher or around thetemperature scale probed in our experiments. However,even above the transition temperature, the susceptibility
is enhanced. A simple Weiss mean ﬁeld or Stonermodel leads to the generic form of the susceptibilityðTÞ ¼ 0 ðTÞ=ð1  w0 ðTÞÞ, where 0 ðTÞ is the Paulisusceptibility of the non-interacting gas and w the interaction parameter. This formula predicts a twofold increasein the susceptibility even 50% above the transition temperature, which is well within the sensitivity of ourmeasurements.
Therefore, our experiment can rule out ferromagnetism
for temperatures even slightly lower than the experimental
temperatures. Temperatures are very difﬁcult to measure
in a transient way for a dynamic system which may not be
in full equilibrium. For example, cloud thermometry
requires full equilibration and lifetimes much longer thanthe longest trap period. We attempted to measure thetemperature after the hold time near the Feshbach resonance by quickly switching the magnetic ﬁeld to weakinteractions at 527 G and then performing noise thermometry using speckle imaging [4]. We measure columnintegrated ﬂuctuations that are 0.61(8) of the Poisson value
which implies an effective temperature well below TF ,around 0.33(7) TF , not much higher than our initial
temperature of 0.23 TF . Although the cloud is not in fullequilibrium, an effective local temperature can still beobtained from noise thermometry.
Alternatively, we can estimate the temperature increase
from the heat released by pair formation. A simple model[38] accounting for the relevant energy contributions
predicts for kF a ¼ 1 that molecule fractions of higher
than 20% result in a ﬁnal temperature above 0:4TF , anestimate which is higher than the measurement reported
above. One may hope that closer to resonance many-bodyweek ending
15 JUNE 2012

effects lower the released energy; however, as we show
in the Supplemental Material (Fig. 1 of [38]) this is
not necessarily the case due to the repulsive interactionenergy.
Our experiment has not shown any evidence for a possible ferromagnetic phase in an atomic gas in ‘‘chemical’’equilibrium with dimers. This implies one of the following
possibilities. (i) This gas can be described by a simple
Hamiltoninan with strong short range repulsion.
However, this Hamiltonian does not lead to ferromagnetism. This would be in conﬂict with the results of recent
quantum Monte Carlo simulations [19,20] and second
order perturbation theory [11], and in agreement withconclusions based on Tan relations [39]. (ii) The temperature of the gas was too high to observe ferromagnetism.
This would then imply a critical temperature around or
below 0:2T=TF , lower than generally assumed. (iii) The
quasiparticles cannot be described by the simple model ofan atomic gas with short-range repulsive interactions dueto their interactions with the paired fraction.
A previous experiment [3] reported evidence for ferromagnetism by presenting non-monotonic behavior of atom
loss rate, kinetic energy and cloud size when approaching
the Feshbach resonance, in agreement with predictions
based on the Stoner model. Our measurements conﬁrm
that the properties of the gas strongly change near
kF a ¼ 1. Similar to [3], we observe features in kinetic
and release energy measurements near the resonance (seeSupplemental Material [38]). However, the behavior ismore complex than that captured by simple models. The
atomic fraction decays non-exponentially (see Fig. 3), andtherefore an extracted decay time will depend on the detailsof the measurement such as time resolution. Reference [3]found a maximum of the loss rate of 200 s1 for a Fermi
energy of 28 kHz. Our lower bound of the decay rate of3  103 s1 is 15 times faster at a ﬁve times smaller Fermi
energy. Our more detailed study rules out that Ref. [3] has
observed ferromagnetic behavior.
Our conclusion is that an ultracold gas with strong shortrange repulsive interactions near a Feshbach resonanceremains in the paramagnetic phase. The fast formation ofmolecules and the accompanying heating makes it impossible to study such a gas in equilibrium, conﬁrming predictions of a rapid conversion of the atomic gas to pairs[21,40]. The Stoner criterion for ferromagnetism obtains
when the effective interaction strength times the density ofstates is larger than one. This is a at least an approximately
valid criterion for multi-band lattice models [41]. We haveshown here that this criterion cannot be applied to Fermi
gases with short-range repulsive interactions (the basic
Stoner model) since the neglected competition with pairing
is crucial.
This work was supported by NSF and ONR, AFOSR
MURI, and under ARO Grant No. W911NF-07-1-0493
with funds from the DARPA Optical Lattice Emulator

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PRL 108, 240404 (2012)PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS

program. We are thankful to Eugene Demler, David
Pekker, Boris Svistunov, Nikolay Prokof’ev, andWilhelm Zwerger for valuable discussions and to David
Weld for critical reading of the manuscript.

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