Crossover from collisionless to collisional spin dynamics of polarized fermions

Abstract

We study the transverse spin dynamics of trapped polarized Fermi gases in the high temperature limit. In the non-interacting collisionless regime, a magnetic field gradient induces collective spin wave oscillations. In the strongly interacting collisional regime, the dynamics are governed by spin diffusion. These two limits have been extensively studied both experimentally and theoretically, but the crossover between them has received less attention. In this paper, we use a quantum Boltzmann equation to study transverse spin dynamics and show how the excitations evolve from dispersive to diffusive in the high temperature limit. We provide analytical solutions in the two limiting regimes, which agree well with our numerical results.