Direct observation of the Fermi surface in an ultracold atomic gas

The ideal (i.e., noninteracting), homogeneous Fermi gas, with its characteristic sharp Fermi surface in the momentum distribution, is a fundamental concept relevant to the behavior of many systems. With trapped Fermi gases of ultracold atoms, one can realize and probe a nearly ideal Fermi gas; however, these systems have a nonuniform density due to the confining potential. We show that the effect of the density variation, which typically washes out any semblance of a Fermi surface step in the momentum distribution, can be mitigated by selectively probing atoms near the center of a trapped gas. With this approach, we have directly measured a Fermi surface in momentum space for a nearly ideal gas, where the average density and temperature of the probed portion of the gas can be determined from the location and sharpness of the Fermi surface.