Adiabatic compression of a trapped Fermi gas - art. no. 033603

We propose a method to reach conditions of high degeneracy in a trapped Fer mi gas, based on the adiabatic transfer of a small fraction of atoms from a magnetic to a tighter optical trap. The transformation yields a large incr ease of the Fermi energy, without a significant change of the temperature. The large enhancement of the central, density emphasizes the role of the in teractions and makes the system much closer to the BCS transition. We show that, despite Pauli blocking, the thermalization processes ensuring equilib rium in the optical trap are not suppressed at low temperature.