Pranešimo santrauka:

"Pauli crystals”

Mariusz Gajda (IF PAN, Warsaw, Poland)

Monday, August 11, 11am (A. Gostauto 12, room No. 332)

The Pauli exclusion principle, formulated by Wolfgang Pauli in 1925,  is one of the fundamental principles of quantum physics. It says that no two fermions can populate simultaneously the same quantum state. As ordinary matter is build up from three types of fermions: electrons, protons and neutrons, the Pauli exclusion principle has very important implications on our everyday life. It explains a variety of elements in the periodic table of elements. The more rigorous formulation of the Pauli exclusion principle says that a total wavefunction of identical half-spin particles (fermions) must be antisymmetric with respect to exchange of any two particles. The consequence of the Pauli principle is that electrons of the same spin are kept apart by a repulsive exchange interaction, which is a short-range effect, acting simultaneously with the long-range electrostatic or Coulombic force.

In my talk I will show that indeed the Pauli exclusion principle can be viewed as a kind of a short range repulsive force. I show that fermionic spin polarized atoms trapped by an external harmonic potential are most likely arranged in some geometric structures – the “Pauli crystals”. I analyze the geometry of these crystals in two and three spatial dimensions for different number of atoms. I shall also discuss the possibility of observation of the Pauli crystals in a single-shot image of the trapped atomic cloud.