Simulating strongly correlated electrons with a strongly interacting Fermi gas

The quantum many-body physics of strongly-correlated fermions is studied in a degenerate, strongly- interacting atomic Fermi gas, first realized by our group with DOE support in 2002. This system, which exhibits strong spin pairing, is now widely studied and provides an important paradigm for testing predictions based on state-of-the-art many-body theory in fields ranging from nuclear matter to high temperature superfluidity and superconductivity. As the system is strongly interacting, both the superfluid and the normal fluid are nontrivial and of great interest. A central part of our program on Fermi gases is the connection between the study of thermodynamics, supported by DOE and the study of hydrodynamic transport, supported by NSF. This connection is especially interesting in view of a recent conjecture from the string theory community on the concept of nearly perfect normal fluids, which exhibit a minimum ratio of shear viscosity to entropy density in strongly-interacting, scale-invariant systems