Pauli paramagnetism of an ideal Fermi gas

Abstract

We show how to use trapped ultracold atoms to measure the magnetic susceptibility of a two-component Fermi gas. The method is illustrated for a noninteracting gas of ${}^{6}$Li, using the tunability of interactions around a wide Feshbach resonance. The susceptibility versus effective magnetic field is directly obtained from the inhomogeneous density profile of the trapped atomic cloud. The wings of the cloud realize the high-field limit where the polarization approaches 100$%$, which is not accessible for an electron gas.