Inhomogeneous spin diffusion in traps with cold atoms

Abstract

The spin diffusion and damped oscillations are studied in the collision of two spin polarized clouds of cold atoms with resonant interactions. The strong density dependence of the diffusion coefficient leads to inhomogeneous spin diffusion that changes from central to surface spin flow as the temperature increases. The inhomogeneity and the smaller finite trap size significantly reduce the spin diffusion rate at low temperatures. The resulting spin diffusion rates, spin drag and initial damped oscillations are compatible with measurements at low to high temperatures for resonant attractive interactions but are incompatible with a metastable ferromagnetic phase.

3 pages, 1 figure; Phys. Rev. Letters, 2012

References in corpus (4)

• Itinerant Ferromagnetism in a Fermi Gas of Ultracold Atoms
• Collisional Properties of a Polarized Fermi Gas with Resonant Interactions
• Spin diffusion in Fermi gases
• Spin diffusion in trapped clouds of strongly interacting cold atoms

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Observation of quantum-limited spin transport in strongly interacting two-dimensional Fermi gases
• Observation of the Leggett-Rice effect in a unitary Fermi gas
• Universal Spin Transport and Quantum Bounds for Unitary Fermions
• Spin Drag of a Fermi Gas in a Harmonic Trap
• Spin diffusion in ultracold spin-orbit coupled ${}^{40}$K gas