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Free keywords:
Condensed Matter, Quantum Gases, cond-mat.quant-gas
Abstract:
Knowing when a physical system has reached sufficient size for its
macroscopic properties to be well described by many-body theory is difficult.
We investigate the crossover from few to many-body physics by studying quasi
one-dimensional systems of ultracold atoms consisting of a single impurity
interacting with an increasing number of identical fermions. We measure the
interaction energy of such a system as a function of the number of majority
atoms for different strengths of the interparticle interaction. As we increase
the number of majority atoms one by one we observe the fast convergence of the
normalized interaction energy towards a many-body limit calculated for a single
impurity immersed in a Fermi sea of majority particles.