Probing the Excitation Spectrum of a Fermi Gas in the BCS-BEC Crossover Regime

Abstract

We measure excitation spectra of an ultracold gas of fermionic K40 atoms in the BCS–Bose-Einstein-condensation (BEC) crossover regime. The measurements are performed with a novel spectroscopy that employs a small modulation of the B field close to a Feshbach resonance to give rise to a modulation of the interaction strength. With this method we observe both a collective excitation as well as the dissociation of fermionic atom pairs in the strongly interacting regime. The excitation spectra reveal the binding energy or excitation gap for pairs in the crossover region.