Atom loss and the formation of a molecular Bose-Einstein condensate by Feshbach resonance
- 13 September 2000
- journal article
- research article
- Published by American Physical Society (APS) in Physical Review A
- Vol. 62 (4) , 043605
- https://doi.org/10.1103/physreva.62.043605
Abstract
In experiments conducted recently at MIT on Na Bose-Einstein condensates [S. Inouye et al., Nature (London) 392, 151 (1998); J. Stenger et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 82, 2422 (1999)], large loss rates were observed when a time-varying magnetic field was used to tune a molecular Feshbach resonance state near the state of a pair of atoms in the condensate. A collisional deactivation mechanism affecting a temporarily formed molecular condensate [see V. A. Yurovsky, A. Ben-Reuven, P. S. Julienne and C. J. Williams, Phys. Rev. A 60, R765 (1999)], studied here in more detail, accounts for the results of the slow-sweep experiments. A best fit to the MIT data yields a rate coefficient for deactivating atom-molecule collisions of In the case of the fast-sweep experiment, a study is carried out of the combined effect of two competing mechanisms, the three-atom (atom-molecule) or four-atom (molecule-molecule) collisional deactivation versus a process of two-atom trap-state excitation by curve crossing [F. H. Mies, P. S. Julienne, and E. Tiesinga, Phys. Rev. A 61, 022721 (2000)]. It is shown that both mechanisms contribute to the loss comparably and nonadditively.
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