Observation of Bose-Einstein Condensation of Molecules

2003/11/30 by Martin W. Zwierlein, M. W. Zwierlein, C. A. Stan +9 · 14 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Atomic and Subatomic Physics Research #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #Quantum, superfluid, helium dynamics #cond-mat.soft #cond-mat.stat-mech

paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.91.250401

published as Phys. Rev. Lett. 91, 250401 (2003) · 4 pages, 3 figures

arxiv created 2003/12/15 · openalex publication_date 2003/12/15 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

We have observed Bose-Einstein condensation of molecules. When a spin mixture of fermionic 6Li atoms was evaporatively cooled in an optical dipole trap near a Feshbach resonance, the atomic gas was converted into 6Li2 molecules. Below 600 nK, a Bose-Einstein condensate of up to 900 000 molecules was identified by the sudden onset of a bimodal density distribution. This condensate realizes the limit of tightly bound fermion pairs in the crossover between BCS superfluidity and Bose-Einstein condensation.

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• Time-dependent Gross-Pitaevskii equation for composite bosons as the strong-coupling limit of the fermionic broken-symmetry random-phase approximation
• Collective Excitations of a Degenerate Gas at the BEC-BCS Crossover
• On the stability of Bose–Fermi mixtures
• Formation of ultracold ³⁹K¹³³Cs Feshbach molecules
• Bose–Einstein condensate [wikipedia]

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