We studied the magnetic field dependence of the inelastic decay of an ultracold, optically trapped 6-Li gas of different spin compositions. The spin mixture of the two lowest hyperfine states showed two decay resonances at 550 G and 680 G due to two-body collisions, close to the predicted Feshbach resonance of the elastic s-wave collisions at 800 G. The rapid decay near Feshbach resonances found in bosonic gases was found to be suppressed by the Pauli exclusion principle. The observed lifetimes of several hundred milliseconds are much longer than the expected time for Cooper pair formation and the phase transition to superfluidity in the vicinity of the Feshbach resonance.
We have observed Bose-Einstein condensation of pairs of fermionic atoms in an ultracold ^6Li gas at magnetic fields above a Feshbach resonance, where no stable ^6Li_2 molecules would exist in vacuum. We accurately determined the position of the resonance to be 822+-3 G. Molecular Bose-Einstein condensates were detected after a fast magnetic field ramp, which transferred pairs of atoms at close distances into bound molecules. Condensate fractions as high as 80% were obtained. The large condensate fractions are interpreted in terms of pre-existing molecules which are quasi-stable even above the two-body Feshbach resonance due to the presence of the degenerate Fermi gas.
We determine the adiabatic phase diagram of a resonantly-coupled system of Fermi atoms and Bose molecules confined in the harmonic trap by using the local density approximation. The adiabatic phase diagram shows the fermionic condensate fraction composed of condensed molecules and Cooper pair atoms. The key idea of our work is conservation of entropy through the adiabatic process, extending the study of Williams et al. [Williams et al., New J. Phys. 6, 123 (2004)] for an ideal gas mixture to include the resonant interaction in a mean-field theory. We also calculate the molecular conversion efficiency as a function of initial temperature. Our work helps to understand recent experiments on the BCS-BEC crossover, in terms of the initial temperature measured before a sweep of the magnetic field.
Feshbach resonances in lithium-6 were experimentally studied and theoretically analyzed. In addition to two previously known s-wave resonances, we found three p-wave resonances. Four of these resonances are narrow and yield a precise value of the singlet scattering length, but do not allow us to accurately predict the location of the broad resonance near 83 mT. Its position was previously measured in a molecule-dissociation experiment for which we, here, discuss systematic shifts.
Quantum lattice solitons in a system of two ultracold bosons near Feshbach resonance are investigated. It is shown that their binding energy, effective mass, and spatial width, can be manipulated varying the detuning from the Feshbach resonance. In the case of attractive atomic interactions, the molecule creation stabilizes the solitons. In the case of repulsive interactions, the molecule creation leads to the possibility of existence of bright solitons in some interval of detunings. Due to quantum fluctuations the soliton width is a random quantity. Its standard deviation is larger than the mean value for such a small number of particles.
We optimize a collision-induced cooling process for ultracold atoms in the nondegenerate regime. It makes use of a Feshbach resonance, instead of rf radiation in evaporative cooling, to selectively expel hot atoms from a trap. Using functional minimization we analytically show that for the optimal cooling process the resonance energy must be tuned such that it linearly follows the temperature. Here, optimal cooling is defined as maximizing the phase-space density after a fixed cooling duration. The analytical results are confirmed by numerical Monte-Carlo simulations. In order to simulate more realistic experimental conditions, we show that background losses do not change our conclusions, while additional non-resonant two-body losses make a lower initial resonance energy with non-linear dependence on temperature preferable.