Degenerate fermion gas heating by hole creation

Loss processes that remove particles from an atom trap leave holes behind in the single particle distribution if the trapped gas is a degenerate fermion system. The appearance of holes increases the temperature and we show that the heating is (i) significant if the initial temperature is well below the Fermi temperature $T_F$, and (ii) increases the temperature to $T\ge T_F\mathrm{/}4$ after half of the system’s lifetime, regardless of the initial temperature. The hole heating has important consequences for the prospect of observing Cooper-pairing in atom traps.