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Originally published in Science Express on 22 July 2004
Science 20 August 2004:
Vol. 305. no. 5687, pp. 1128 - 1130
DOI: 10.1126/science.1100818
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Reports

Observation of the Pairing Gap in a Strongly Interacting Fermi Gas

C. Chin,1 M. Bartenstein,1 A. Altmeyer,1 S. Riedl,1 S. Jochim,1 J. Hecker Denschlag,1 R. Grimm1,2*

We studied fermionic pairing in an ultracold two-component gas of 6Li atoms by observing an energy gap in the radio-frequency excitation spectra. With control of the two-body interactions through a Feshbach resonance, we demonstrated the dependence of the pairing gap on coupling strength, temperature, and Fermi energy. The appearance of an energy gap with moderate evaporative cooling suggests that our full evaporation brought the strongly interacting system deep into a superfluid state.

1 Institut für Experimentalphysik, Universität Innsbruck, Technikerstraße 25, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria.
2 Institut für Quantenoptik und Quanteninformation, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: rudolf.grimm{at}uibk.ac.at

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