Damping of collective modes in ultracold trapped Fermi gases with in-medium cross section

Abstract

We study the damping of the quadrupole and scissors modes of ultracold trapped Fermi gases with large negative scattering length at temperatures above the superfluid critical temperature Tc within the framework of the Boltzmann equation. The in-medium scattering cross-section is strongly enhanced at temperatures slightly above Tc. This has strong effects on the collisional damping of the collective modes and the transition from hydrodynamic to collisionless behaviour as a function of temperature. Within the method of phase-space moments of second order, it was found that the resulting damping rates are in strong disagreement with experimental data from the Innsbruck group, which seemed to favour the free cross section. However, the comparison with numerical solutions of the Boltzmann equation revealed that the method of second-order phase-space moments is insufficient. Here we show that the agreement between the calculation using the in-medium cross-section and the data can be clearly improved by including also fourth-order moments.