| This thesis presents experimental work probing a strongly interacting Fermi gas of atoms. The work presented here contributed to the demonstration that strongly interacting Fermi gas systems are accessing universal physics. The universality of these systems means that we can use an atomic Fermi gas to gain an understanding of strongly interacting Fermions occurring elsewhere in nature, such as nuclear and neutron matter, high transition temperature superconductors, and the quark-gluon plasma. Once the universality of these systems was verified, experiments were performed to extract the microscopic quantities of an atomic Fermi gas. These experiments employ a technique akin to photoemission spectroscopy for electrons found in condensed matter physics. The photoemission spectroscopy experiments presented here directly reveal the spectral function which contains many valuable microscopic quantities such as the energy dispersion and quasi-particle lifetime. These experiments provide stringent tests of many-body theories. |
