Pairing gap and in-gap excitations in trapped fermionic superfluids

Science. 2004 Aug 20;305(5687):1131-3. doi: 10.1126/science.1100782. Epub 2004 Jul 22.

Abstract

We consider trapped atomic Fermi gases with Feshbach-resonance enhanced interactions in pseudogap and superfluid temperatures. We calculate the spectrum of radio-frequency (or laser) excitations for transitions that transfer atoms out of the superfluid state. The spectrum displays the pairing gap and also the contribution of unpaired atoms, that is, in-gap excitations. The results support the conclusion that a superfluid, in which pairing is a manybody effect, was observed in recent experiments on radio-frequency spectroscopy of the pairing gap.