AMO Seminar May 2, at 1:00 PM, Physics 1201
"Feshbach molecule formation in finite-temperature quantum gases
"
Jamie Williams
NIST
ABSTRACT: An exciting development in the field of ultracold atomic
gases is the ability to create diatomic molecules by adjusting a
Feshbach resonance in the interatomic potential. An extraordinary
application of this capability has been to dynamically traverse
the BEC-BCS crossover in Fermi gases. While a great deal of
attention has focused on equilibrium properties in the
superfluid regime, a complete theoretical understanding
of the dynamics of molecule formation in a normal gas
is still lacking. In a recent article [Williams et al.,
J. Phys. B: At. Mol. Opt. Phys. 37, L351 (2004)],
we presented coupled Boltzmann-like kinetic equations for
the atoms and molecules. In this talk, we use our approach
to understand the saturation behavior of the molecular
conversion efficiency that is observed in experiments
(eg. Hodby et al., cond- mat/0411487).
Contact: Luis Orozco