Light scattering from a degenerate quasi-one-dimensional confined gas of noninteracting fermions - art. no. 023421

We evaluate the scattering functions of a gas of spin-polarized, noninterac ting fermions confined in a quasi-one-dimensional harmonic trap at zero tem perature. The main focus is on the inelastic scattering spectrum and on the angular distribution of scattered light from a mesoscopic atomic cloud as probes of its discrete quantum levels and of its shell structure in this re stricted geometry. The dynamic structure factor is calculated and compared with the results of a local-density approximation exploiting the spectrum o f a one-dimensional homogeneous Fermi gas. The elastic and inelastic contri butions to the static structure factor are separately evaluated: the inelas tic term becomes dominant as the momentum transfer increases, masking a sma ll peak at twice the Fermi momentum in the elastic term but still reflectin g the discrete quantum levels of the cloud. A fast and accurate numerical m ethod is developed to evaluate the full pair distribution function for meso scopic inhomogeneous clouds.