Conversion of an Atomic Fermi Gas to a Long-Lived Molecular Bose Gas

2003/08/15 by Kevin E. Strecker, Guthrie B. Partridge, Randall G. Hulet · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #cond-mat

paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.91.080406

published as Phys. Rev. Lett. 91, 080406 (2003) · Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. Letters

arxiv created 2003/08/15 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01

Abstract

We have converted an ultracold Fermi gas of ⁶Li atoms into an ultracold gas of ⁶Li₂ molecules by adiabatic passage through a Feshbach resonance. Approximately 1.5 × 10⁵ molecules in the least-bound, v = 38, vibrational level of the X¹ Σ⁺_g singlet state are produced with an efficiency of 50%. The molecules remain confined in an optical trap for times of up to 1 s before we dissociate them by a reverse adiabatic sweep.

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