Molecular Bose-Einstein Condensate Research Articles

Resonantly paired fermionic superfluids

We present a theory of a degenerate atomic Fermi gas, interacting through a narrow Feshbach resonance, whose position and therefore strength can be tuned experimentally, as demonstrated recently in ultracold trapped atomic gases. The distinguishing feature of the theory is that its accuracy is controlled by a dimensionless parameter proportional to the ratio of the width of the resonance to Fermi energy. The theory is therefore quantitatively accurate for a narrow Feshbach resonance. In the case of a narrow s-wave resonance, our analysis leads to a quantitative description of the crossover between a weakly paired BCS superconductor of overlapping Cooper pairs and a strongly paired molecular Bose–Einstein condensate of diatomic molecules. In the case of pairing via a p-wave resonance, that we show is always narrow for a sufficiently low density, we predict a detuning-temperature phase diagram, that in the course of a BCS–BEC crossover can exhibit a host of thermodynamically distinct phases separated by quantum and classical phase transitions. For an intermediate strength of the dipolar anisotropy, the system exhibits a p x + i p y paired superfluidity that undergoes a topological phase transition between a weakly coupled gapless ground state at large positive detuning and a strongly paired fully gapped molecular superfluid for a negative detuning. In two dimensions the former state is characterized by a Pfaffian ground state exhibiting topological order and non-Abelian vortex excitations familiar from fractional quantum Hall systems.

Molecule condensate production from an atomic Bose-Einstein condensate via Feshbach scattering in an optical lattice: Gap solitons

We propose a scheme for making a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) of molecules from a BEC of atoms in a strongly confining two-dimensional optical lattice and a weak one-dimensional optical lattice in the third dimension. The stable solutions obtained for the order parameters take the form of a different type of gap soliton, with both atomic and molecular BECs, and also standard gap solitons with only a molecular BEC. The strongly confining dimensions of the lattice stabilize the BEC against inelastic energy transfer in atom-molecule collisions. The solitons with atoms and molecules may be obtained by starting with an atomic BEC, and gradually tuning the resonance by changing the external magnetic-field strength until the desired atom-molecule soliton is obtained. A gap soliton of a BEC of only molecules may be obtained nonadiabatically by starting from an atom-only gap soliton, far from a Feshbach resonance and adjusting the magnetic field to near Feshbach resonance. After a period of time in which the dimer field grows, change the magnetic field such that the detuning is large and negative and Feshbach effects wash out, turn off the optical lattice in phase with the atomic BEC, and turn on an optical lattice in phase with the molecules. The atoms disperse, leaving a gap soliton composed of a molecular BEC. Regarding instabilities in the dimension of the weak optical lattice, the solitons which are comprised of both atoms and molecules are sometimes stable and sometimes unstable---we present numerically obtained results. Gap solitons comprised of only molecules have the same stability properties as the standard gap solitons: stable from frequencies slightly below the middle of the band gap to the top, and unstable below that point. Instabilities are only weakly affected by the soliton velocities, and all instabilities are oscillatory.

Molecule formation in ultracold atomic gases

This review describes recent experimental and theoretical advances in forming molecules in ultracold gases of trapped alkali metal atoms, both by magnetic tuning through Feshbach resonances and by photoassociation. Molecular Bose–Einstein condensation of long-range states of both boson dimers and fermion dimers was achieved in 2002–2003. Condensates of boson dimers were found to be short-lived, but long-lived condensates of fermion dimers have been produced. Signatures of triatomic and tetraatomic molecules have recently been observed. Both homonuclear and heteronuclear molecules have been formed by photoassociation, mostly in very high vibrational levels. Recent attempts to produce ultracold molecules in short-range states (low vibrational levels) are described. Experimental and theoretical work on collisions of ultracold molecules is discussed. 1. Introduction 498 2. Basic properties of ultracold atomic gases 499 2.1. Bosons and fermions 499 2.2. Hyperfine structure 499 2.3. Trapping and cooling 500 2.4. Bose–Einstein condensation and Fermi degeneracy 501 2.5. Scattering lengths 502 2.6. Feshbach resonances 503 3. Molecules formed by Feshbach resonance tuning 506 3.1. Dimers of bosonic atoms 506 3.2. Dimers of fermionic atoms 508 3.3. Heteronuclear Feshbach resonances 511 3.4. Triatomic and larger molecules 512 4. Molecules formed by photoassociation 512 4.1. Photoassociation in Bose–Einstein Condensates 514 4.2. Coherent control 515 4.3. Molecules in low vibrational states 516 5. Molecules in optical lattices 517 6. Collisions of ultracold molecules 519 7. Conclusions 521 Acknowledgments 522 References 522

Order parameter and Josephson effect of nonuniform molecular Bose-Einstein condensates

For two-component Fermi gases at zero temperature, through a general derivation based on the BCS wave function, our research shows that the nonuniform molecular Bose-Einstein condensate has off-diagonal long-range order and can be described well by an order parameter when the size of molecules is much smaller than the size of the whole system. We also give the equation of state and nonlinear evolution equation for the order parameter of nonuniform molecular condensates, which is similar to the Gross-Pitaevskii equation of atomic Bose condensate. The nonlinear evolution equation is applied to consider the Josephson effect for two weakly linked molecular condensates in the presence of nonuniform magnetic field. We find clear particle-number oscillation where spatially dependent binding energy of molecules plays an important role.

Resonance reactions and enhancement of weak interactions in collisions of cold molecules

With the creation of ultracold atoms and molecules, a new type of chemistry - "resonance" chemistry - emerges: chemical reactions can occur when the energy of colliding atoms and molecules matches a bound state of the combined molecule (Feshbach resonance). This chemistry is rather similar to reactions that take place in nuclei at low energies. In this paper we suggest some problems for future experimental and theoretical work related to the resonance chemistry of ultracold molecules. Molecular Bose-Einstein condensates are particularly interesting because in this system collisions and chemical reactions are extremely sensitive to weak fields; also, a preferred reaction channel may be enhanced due to a finite number of final states. The sensitivity to weak fields arises due to the high density of narrow compound resonances and the macroscopic number of molecules with kinetic energy E=0 (in the ground state of a mean-field potential). The high sensitivity to the magnetic field may be used to measure the distribution of energy intervals, widths, and magnetic moments of compound resonances and study the onset of quantum chaos. A difference in the production rate of right-handed and left-handed chiral molecules may be produced by external electric and magnetic fields and the finite width of the resonance. The same effect may be produced by the parity-violating energy difference in chiral molecules.

Design of infrared laser pulses for the deexcitation of highly excited homonuclear diatomic molecules

We explore the possibility of using shaped infrared laser pulses to deexcite a homonuclear diatomic molecule from its highest vibrational state down to its ground vibrational state. The motivation for this study arises from the need to deexcite alkali metal dimers in a similar way so as to stabilize molecular Bose-Einstein condensates. We demonstrate that for the case of the H(2) molecule, where it is possible to evaluate all the necessary high accuracy ab initio data on the interaction of the molecule with an electric field, we are able to successfully design a sequence of infrared laser pulses to accomplish the desired deexcitation process in a highly efficient manner.

Stimulated Raman adiabatic passage from atomic to molecular Bose-Einstein condensates: Feedback laser-detuning control and suppression of dynamical instability

We present a feedback control scheme that designs time-dependent laser-detuning frequency to suppress possible dynamical instability in coupled free-quasibound-bound atom-molecule condensate systems. The proposed adaptive frequency chirp with feedback is shown to be highly robust and very efficient in the passage from an atomic to a stable molecular Bose-Einstein condensate.

Bogoliubov theory for mutually coherent hybrid atomic molecular condensates: Quasiparticles and superchemistry

We investigate the equilibrium properties of a hybrid atomic and molecular Bose-Einstein condensate in the context of the Feshbach-resonant quantum many-body model. We analyze fully the mean-field solutions of the system for a general choice of interaction parameters. The quantum fluctuations of the system are obtained from the Bogoliubov theory that characterizes the quasiparticle excitations of the system. In particular we find that the excitation energies have two branches: a Goldstone mode and a second one containing a gap. Both gap energy and phonon velocities are functions of the composition, and our analysis indicates that for a large range of parameter space the system is unstable near a Feshbach resonance.

Atom-Molecule Coherence in a One-Dimensional System

We study a model of one-dimensional fermionic atoms with a narrow Feshbach resonance that allows them to bind in pairs to form bosonic molecules. We show that at low energy, a coherence develops between the molecule and fermion Luttinger liquids. At the same time, a gap opens in the spin excitation spectrum. The coherence implies that the order parameters for the molecular Bose-Einstein condensation and the atomic BCS pairing become identical. Moreover, both bosonic and fermionic charge density wave correlations decay exponentially, in contrast with a usual Luttinger liquid. We exhibit a Luther-Emery point where the systems can be described in terms of noninteracting pseudofermions. At this point we discuss the threshold behavior of density-density response functions.

Ground-State Properties of Fermi Gases in the Strongly Interacting Regime

The ground-state energies and pairing gaps in dilute superfluid Fermi gases have now been calculated with the quantum Monte Carlo method without detailed knowledge of their wave functions. However, such knowledge is essential to predict other properties of these gases such as density matrices and pair distribution functions. We present a new and simple method to optimize the wave functions of quantum fluids using the Green's function Monte Carlo method. It is used to calculate the pair distribution functions and potential energies of Fermi gases over the entire regime from atomic Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer superfluid to molecular Bose-Einstein condensation, spanned as the interaction strength is varied.

Coherent atom–molecule oscillations with hyperspherical coordinates

We investigate two-component boson systems consisting of atoms and binary bound molecules of the same atoms. We assume that a coherent superposition of atomic and molecular Bose–Einstein condensates is formed in a non-stationary state leading to oscillations between the two condensates. To facilitate the formulation, we first give analogies in neutrino oscillations applicable for two states of one particle. We then extend to many non-interacting particles in an external field treated in the mean-field approximation as for collective motion of finite systems. We then go beyond the mean field and provide a framework for interacting particles and correlated wavefunctions. The atom–molecule oscillation frequency is dominated by the molecular binding energy when the atom–atom scattering length is substantially smaller than the oscillator trap length. Comparable scattering lengths can completely change the oscillation frequency. The damping time of the oscillations decreases with atom number and scattering lengths, although a large increase can occur for special combinations of the different interactions.

Dynamics of a molecular Bose-Einstein condensate near a Feshbach resonance

We consider the dissociation of a molecular Bose-Einstein condensate due to a magnetic-field sweep that starts on the molecular side of a Feshbach resonance and ends either on the atomic or on the molecular side. We determine both the time-dependent response of the molecular condensate wave function and the energy distribution of the atoms produced after the sweep. In the cases where experiments have been performed, our analytic and numerical calculations provide good agreement with experimental atomic energy distributions.

Matter-wave amplification and phase conjugation via stimulated dissociation of a molecular Bose-Einstein condensate

We propose a scheme for parametric amplification and phase conjugation of an atomic Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) via stimulated dissociation of a BEC of molecular dimers consisting of bosonic atoms. This can potentially be realized via coherent Raman transitions or using a magnetic Feshbach resonance. We show that the interaction of a small incoming atomic BEC with a (stationary) molecular BEC can produce two counterpropagating atomic beams -- an amplified atomic BEC and its phase-conjugate or time-reversed replica. The two beams can possess strong quantum correlation in the relative particle number, with squeezed number-difference fluctuations.

Tunneling Dynamics Between Any Two Multi-atomic-molecular Bose–Einstein Condensates

Tunneling dynamics of multi-atomic molecules between anytwo multi-atomic molecular Bose–Einstein condensates with Feshbach resonanceis investigated. It is indicated that the tunneling in the two Bose–Einsteincondensates depends not only on the inter-molecular nonlinear interactionsand the initial number of molecule in these condensates, but also on thetunneling coupling between them. It is discovered that besides oscillatingtunneling current between the multi-atomic molecular condensates, thenonlinear multi-atomic molecular tunneling dynamics sustains a self-lockedpopulation imbalance: a macroscopic quantum self-trapping effect. Theinfluence of de-coherence caused by non-condensate molecule on thetunneling dynamics is studied. It is shown that de-coherence suppresses themulti-atomic molecular tunneling.

Feshbach-Resonant Interactions inK40andLi6Degenerate Fermi Gases

We theoretically examine a system of Fermi degenerate atoms coupled to bosonic molecules by a Feshbach resonance, focusing on the superfluid transition to a molecular Bose-Einstein condensate dressed by Cooper pairs of atoms. This problem raises interest because it is unclear at present whether bimodal density distributions observed recently in 40K and 6Li are due to a condensate of bosonic molecules or fermionic atom pairs. As opposed to 40K, we find that any measurable fraction of above-threshold bosonic molecules is necessarily absent for the 6Li system in question, which strongly implicates Cooper pairs as the culprit behind its bimodal distributions.

Comment on “Stimulated Raman adiabatic passage from an atomic to a molecular Bose-Einstein condensate”

Collective two-color photoassociation of a freely interacting $^{87}\mathrm{Rb}$ Bose-Einstein condensate is theoretically examined, focusing on stimulated Raman adiabatic passage (STIRAP) from an atomic to a stable molecular condensate. In particular, Drummond et al. [Phys. Rev. A. 65, 063619 (2002)] have predicted that particle-particle interactions can limit the efficiency of collective atom-molecule STIRAP, and that optimizing the laser parameters can partially overcome this limitation. We suggest that the molecular conversion efficiency can be further improved by treating the initial condensate density as an optimization parameter.

Three-dimensional solitons in coupled atomic-molecular Bose-Einstein condensates

We present a theoretical analysis of three-dimensional (3D) matter-wave solitons and their stability properties in coupled atomic and molecular Bose-Einstein condensates (BEC). The soliton solutions to the mean-field equations are obtained in an approximate analytical form by means of a variational approach. We investigate soliton stability within the parameter space described by the atom-molecule conversion coupling, atom-atom s-wave scattering, and the bare formation energy of the molecular species. In terms of ordinary optics, this is analogous to the process of sub/second-harmonic generation in a quadratic non-linear medium modified by a cubic nonlinearity, together with a phase mismatch term between the fields. While the possibility of formation of multidimensional spatio-temporal solitons in pure quadratic media has been theoretically demonstrated previously, here we extend this prediction to matter-wave interactions in BEC systems where higher-order non-linear processes due to interparticle collisions are unavoidable and may not be neglected. The stability of the solitons predicted for repulsive atom-atom interactions is investigated by direct numerical simulations of the equations of motion in a full 3D lattice. Our analysis also leads to a possible technique for demonstrating the ground state of the Schroedinger-Newton and related equations that describe Bose-Einstein condensates with non-local inter-particle forces.

Quantum phase transition in an atomic Bose gas near a Feshbach resonance

We study the quantum phase transition in an atomic Bose gas near a Feshbach resonance in terms of the renormalization group. This quantum phase transition is characterized by an Ising order parameter. We show that in the low temperature regime where the quantum fluctuations dominate the low-energy physics this phase transition is of first order because of the coupling between the Ising order parameter and the Goldstone mode existing in the bosonic superfluid. However, when the thermal fluctuations become important, the phase transition turns into the second order one, which belongs to the three-dimensional Ising universality class. We also calculate the damping rate of the collective mode in the phase with only a molecular Bose-Einstein condensate near the second-order transition line, which can serve as an experimental signature of the second-order transition.

Rabi dynamics of coupled atomic and molecular Bose-Einstein condensates

The dynamics of coherent Rabi oscillations in coupled atomic and molecular Bose-Einstein condensates is considered taking into account the atom-atom, atom-molecule, and molecule-molecule elastic interactions. The exact solution for the molecule formation probability is derived in terms of the elliptic functions. The two-dimensional space of the involved parameters intensity and detuning is analyzed and divided into two regions where the Rabi oscillations show different characteristics. A resonance curve is found, on which the molecular formation probability monotonically increases as a function of time. The maximum value of the final transition probability on this curve is $1∕2$ (i.e., total transition to the molecular state) and it is achieved at high field intensities starting from a minimal threshold defined by the interspecies interaction scattering lights. The explicit form of the resonance curve is determined, and it is shown that the resonance frequency position reveals a nonlinear dependence on the Rabi frequency of the applied field. A singular point is found on the resonance curve, where a power-law time evolution of the system is observed.

Enhanced dimer relaxation in an atomic and molecular Bose-Einstein condensate

We derive a universal formula for the rate constant \beta for relaxation of a shallow dimer into deeply-bound diatomic molecules in the case of atoms with a large scattering length a. We show that \beta is determined by a and by two 3-body parameters that also determine the binding energies and widths of Efimov states. The rate constant \beta scales like \hbar a/m near the resonance, but the coefficient is a periodic function of ln(a) that may have resonant enhancement at values of a that differ by multiples of 22.7.