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Wednesday, November 03, 2010
2:00 PM - 3:00 PM
CNLS Conference Room (TA-3, Bldg 1690)

Seminar

Shock Waves in Cold Fermi Atoms

Alexander G. Abanov
Department of Physics & Astronomy, Stony Brook University

I will discuss a recent experiment performed by James Joseph and John Thomas in Duke University. They experimentally produced a collision between two ultra-cold atomic clouds made out of unitary Fermi gas.During the collision a very sharp and stable density peak at the center of the trap was formed and subsequently evolved into a box-like shape. We demonstrate that we can model the nonlinear dynamics of this collision using a dimensionally reduced quasi-1D form of hydrodynamic equations of motion. The quasi-1D nonlinear hydrodynamics shows near perfect agreement with the experiment and we see a clear evidence of shock wave formation which is a hallmark of nonlinear physics.

Host: Nikolai Sinitsyn,sinitsyn@lanl.gov