The viscous and thermal relaxation rates of an interacting fermion gas are calculated as functions of temperature and scattering length, using a many-body scattering matrix which incorporates medium effects due to Fermi blocking of intermediate states. These effects are demonstrated to be large close to the transition temperature $T_c$ to the superfluid state. For a homogeneous gas in the unitarity limit, the relaxation rates are increased by nearly an order of magnitude compared to their value obtained in the absence of medium effects due to the Cooper instability at $T_c$. For trapped gases the corresponding ratio is found to be about three due to the averaging over the inhomogeneous density distribution. The effect of superfluidity below $T_c$ is considered to leading order in the ratio between the energy gap and the transition temperature.

• Received 27 April 2005

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.72.043605