Collective dipole oscillations of a spin-orbit coupled Fermi gas

Abstract

The collective dipole mode is induced and measured in a spin-orbit (SO) coupled degenerate Fermi gas of $^{173}$Yb atoms. Using a differential optical Stark shift, we split the degeneracy of three hyperfine states in the ground manifold, and independently couple consecutive spin states with the equal Raman transitions. A relatively long-lived spin-orbit-coupled Fermi gas, readily being realized with a narrow optical transition, allows to explore a single-minimum dispersion where three minima of spin-1 system merge into and to monitor collective dipole modes of fermions in the strong coupling regime. The measured oscillation frequency of the dipole mode is compared with the semi-classical calculation in the single-particle regime. Our work should pave the way towards the characterization of spin-orbit-coupled fermions with large spin $s>\frac{1}{2}$ in the strong coupling regime.