Temperature Dependence of the Universal Contact Parameter in a Unitary Fermi Gas

Abstract

The contact I, introduced by Tan, has emerged as a key parameter characterizing universal properties of strongly interacting Fermi gases. For ultracold Fermi gases near a Feshbach resonance, the contact depends upon two quantities: the interaction parameter 1/(k(F)a), where k(F) is the Fermi wave vector and a is the s-wave scattering length, and the temperature T/T(F), where T(F) is the Fermi temperature. We present the first measurements of the temperature dependence of the contact in a unitary Fermi gas using Bragg spectroscopy. The contact is seen to follow the predicted decay with temperature and shows how pair-correlations at high momentum persist well above the superfluid transition temperature.