Dipole oscillations of a Fermi gas in a disordered trap: Damping and localization

Laboratoire Charles Fabry de l'Institut d'Optique, CNRS and Univ. Paris-Sud, Campus Polytechnique RD 128, F-91127 Palaiseau cedex, France, EU

Corresponding author: lsp@institutoptique.fr

Received: 31 July 2009
Accepted: 13 October 2009

Abstract

We theoretically study the dipole oscillations of an ideal Fermi gas in a disordered trap. We show that even weak disorder induces strong damping of the oscillations and we identify a metal-insulator crossover. For very weak disorder, we show that damping results from a dephasing effect related to weak random perturbations of the energy spectrum. For increasing disorder, we show that the Fermi gas crosses over to an insulating regime characterized by strong damping due to the proliferation of localized states.