Observation of Pauli blocking in light scattering from quantum degenerate fermions

Abstract

Photons not welcome Two identical fermions cannot occupy the same quantum state, or so says the Pauli principle. For a cold gas of fermionic atoms, this means that all states up to the Fermi energy will be occupied, with only the atoms with the highest energy able to change their state. Such conditions have long been predicted to suppress light scattering off gases because the atoms receiving a kick from collisions with photons would have no state to move to. Deb et al ., Margalit et al ., and Sanner et al . now describe this so-called Pauli blocking of light scattering. —JS