John E Thomas, Fritz London Professor  

John E Thomas

Office Location: 185 Physics
Office Phone: (919) 660-2508
Email Address: jet@phy.duke.edu

Education:
Doctor of Philosophy, MIT, 1979
Bachelor of Science, MIT, 1973

Research Categories: Quantum Optics/Atomic & Molecular Physics

Research Description: Professor John E. Thomas is exploring the physics of an optically trapped degenerate Fermi gas. The group pioneered the development of ultrastable all-optical traps for neutral atoms in 1999, achieving trap lifetimes of more than 400 seconds, comparable to the best magnetic traps. The group has developed methods for direct evaporative cooling of neutral atoms in optical traps, enabling the first all-optical production of a degenerate Fermi gas in 2001. The trapped gas comprises a degenerate 50-50 mixture of spin-up and spin-down fermionic lithium-6 atoms, which exhibits a collisional (Feshbach) resonance in a bias magnetic field. In 2002, the Duke group was the first to produce and study a strongly interacting degenerate Fermi gas. This system exhibits universal behavior and is a paradigm for testing nonperturbative many-body calculational methods in disciplines from nuclear matter to high temperature superconductors. In 2004, the Duke group was the first to observe evidence for high temperature superfluid hydrodynamics in a strongly interacting Fermi gas. Ongoing experiments include studies of the thermodynamics and mechanical properties of this unique quantum system.

Recent Publications   (More Publications)

  1. A. Turlapov, J. Kinast, B. Clancy, L. Luo, J. Joseph, and J.E. Thomas, Is a gas of strongly interacting atomic fermions a nearly perfect fluid?, J. Low Temp. Phys., vol. 150 (November, 2008), pp. 567-576 (Online version of paper, published Nov. 2007.) .
  2. X. Du, L. Luo, B. Clancy, and J. E. Thomas, Observation of anomalous spin segregation in a trapped Fermi gas, Phys. Rev. Lett, vol. 101 (October, 2008), pp. 150401 .
  3. J. E. Thomas, L. Luo, B. Clancy, J. Joseph, Y. Zhang, C. Cao, X. Du, and J. Petricka, Fermi Gases with Tunable Interactions, in Conference proceedings, ICAP 2008 (June, 2008) .
  4. Le Luo and J.E. Thomas, Thermodynamic measurements in a strongly interacting Fermi gas, JLTP (2008) (online in November, 2008, to appear in print, January, 2009..) .
  5. J.E. Thomas, Energy measurement and virial theorem for confined universal Fermi gases, Phys. Rev. A, vol. 78 (2008), pp. 013630 .

Current Ph.D. Students   (Former Students)

Postdocs Mentored

  • Jessie Petricka (2008/12-present)  
  • Xu Du (June, 2007 - present)  
  • Andrey Turlapov (December 5, 2003 - December 25, 2006)