Spin diffusion in trapped clouds of strongly interacting cold atoms

Abstract

We show that puzzling recent experimental results on spin diffusion in a strongly interacting atomic gas may be understood in terms of the predicted spin diffusion coefficient for a generic strongly interacting system. Three important features play a central role: a) Fick's law for diffusion must be modified to allow for the trapping potential, b) the diffusion coefficient is inhomogeneous, due to the density variations in the cloud and c) the diffusion approximation fails in the outer parts of the cloud, where the mean free path is long.