Ultracold atomic Fermi gases

Pairing of fermions is ubiquitous in nature and it is responsible for a large variety of fascinating phenomena like superconductivity, superfluidity of 3He, the anomalous rotation of neutron stars, and the BEC-BCS crossover in strongly interacting Fermi gases. When confined to two dimensions, interacting many-body systems bear even more subtle effects, many of which lack understanding at a fundamental level. In particular, the questions how (Cooper-) pairing is established in strongly interacting systems and whether it precedes superconductivity are crucial to be answered. Atomic quantum gases at Nanokelvin temperature have emerged as a highly controlled and competitive system to investigate this physics from first principles. We will present an overview over recent experiments, including the observation of a pseudo pairing gap above the superfluid transition temperature, the discovery of polaron quasiparticles, and spin-transport measurements.