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Phys. Rev. Lett. 92, 200402 (2004) [4 pages]

Collective Molecule Formation in a Degenerate Fermi Gas via a Feshbach Resonance

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Juha Javanainen, Marijan Kos̆trun, Yi Zheng, Andrew Carmichael, Uttam Shrestha, and Patrick J. Meinel
Department of Physics, University of Connecticut, Storrs, Connecticut 06269-3046, USA

Matt Mackie*, Olavi Dannenberg, and Kalle-Antti Suominen*
Helsinki Institute of Physics, PL 64, FIN-00014 Helsingin yliopisto, Finland

Received 2 February 2004; published 20 May 2004

We model collisionless collective conversion of a degenerate Fermi gas of atoms into bosonic molecules via a Feshbach resonance, treating the bosonic molecules as a classical field and seeding the pairing amplitudes with random phases. A dynamical instability of the Fermi sea against association with molecules drives the conversion. The model qualitatively reproduces several experimental observations [Regal et al., Nature (London) 424 47 (2003)]. We predict that the initial temperature of the Fermi gas sets the limit for the efficiency of atom-molecule conversion.

© 2004 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.92.200402
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevLett.92.200402
PACS:
03.75.Ss, 03.65.Sq, 03.75.Kk, 05.30.Fk

*Also at Department of Physics, University of Turku, FIN-20014 Turun yliopisto, Finland.

 
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