Probing Interactions between Ultracold Fermions

At ultracold temperatures, the Pauli exclusion principle suppresses collisions between identical fermions. This has motivated the development of atomic clocks using fermionic isotopes. However, by probing an optical clock transition with thousands of lattice-confined, ultracold fermionic Sr atoms, we have observed density-dependent collisional frequency shifts. These collision effects have been measured systematically and are supported by a theoretical description attributing them to inhomogeneities in the probe excitation process that render the atoms distinguishable. This work has also yielded insights for zeroing the clock density shift.