Probing the excitation spectrum of a Fermi gas in the BCS-BEC crossover regime

Abstract

We measure excitation spectra of an ultracold gas of fermionic $^{40}$K atoms in the BCS-BEC crossover regime. The measurements are performed with a novel spectroscopy that employs a small modulation of the B-field close to a Feshbach resonance to give rise to a modulation of the interaction strength. With this method we observe both a collective excitation as well as the dissociation of fermionic atom pairs in the strongly interacting regime. The excitation spectra reveal the binding energy / excitation gap for pairs in the crossover region.