"Studying the BCS-BEC crossover regime with a Fermi gas of atoms"

Recent years have seen the emergence of an intriguing Fermi system achieved with ultracold atomic gases. With these systems it is possible to widely tune the s-wave interatomic interaction strength using a Feshback resonance. Of particular interest is the strongly interacting regime ($-1 < 1/k_Fa < 1$) where a crossover between BCS theory of superconductivity and Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) or molecules occurs. Recently experiments with $^6$Li and $^{40}$K have succeeded in studying many aspects of this superfluid Fermi system. In my talk I will discuss experiments performed at JILA on this Fermi system such as a measurement of the phase diagram, detection of fermionic atom pairs through atom shot noise, and a study of the Fermi gas momentum distribution.