Pauli blocking of light scattering in degenerate fermions

Yair Margalit, Yu-Kun Lu, Furkan Cagri Top, Wolfgang Ketterle

Published 2021-03-11Version 1

Pauli blocking of spontaneous emission is responsible for the stability of atoms. Higher electronic orbitals cannot decay to lower-lying states if they are already occupied -- this is Pauli blocking due to occupation of internal states. Pauli blocking also occurs when free atoms scatter light elastically (Rayleigh scattering) and the final external momentum states are already occupied. A suppression of the total rate of light scattering requires a quantum-degenerate Fermi gas with a Fermi energy larger than the photon recoil energy. This has been predicted more than 30 years ago, but never realized. Here we report the creation of a dense Fermi gas of ultracold lithium atoms and show that at low temperatures light scattering is suppressed. We also explore the suppression of inelastic light scattering when two colliding atoms emit light shifted in frequency.