Realization of a Resonant Fermi Gas with a Large Effective Range

Abstract

We have measured the interaction energy and three-body recombination rate for a two-component Fermi gas near a narrow Feshbach resonance and found both to be strongly energy dependent. Even for de Broglie wavelengths greatly exceeding the van der Waals length scale, the behavior of the interaction energy as a function of temperature cannot be described by atoms interacting via a contact potential. Rather, energy-dependent corrections beyond the scattering length approximation are required, indicating a resonance with an anomalously large effective range. For fields where the molecular state is above threshold, the rate of three-body recombination is enhanced by a sharp, two-body resonance arising from the closed-channel molecular state which can be magnetically tuned through the continuum. This narrow resonance can be used to study strongly correlated Fermi gases that simultaneously have a sizable effective range and a large scattering length.