Observation of the Pairing Gap in a Strongly Interacting Fermi Gas

Abstract

We studied fermionic pairing in an ultracold two-component gas of 6Li atoms by observing an energy gap in the radio-frequency excitation spectra. With control of the two-body interactions through a Feshbach resonance, we demonstrated the dependence of the pairing gap on coupling strength, temperature, and Fermi energy. The appearance of an energy gap with moderate evaporative cooling suggests that our full evaporation brought the strongly interacting system deep into a superfluid state.