Paper detail

Spin Transport in Polaronic and Superfluid Fermi Gases

We present measurements of spin transport in ultracold gases of fermionic lithium-6 in a mixture of two spin states at a Feshbach resonance. In particular, we study the spin dipole mode, where the two spin components are displaced from each other against a harmonic restoring force. We prepare a highly-imbalanced, or polaronic, spin mixture with a spin dipole excitation and observe strong, unitarity limited damping of the spin dipole mode. In gases with small spin imbalance, below the Pauli limit for superfluidity, we observe strongly damped spin flow despite the presence of a superfluid core.