What happens to a BEC at unitarity?

ORAL

Abstract

Understanding many-body quantum systems with interactions, especially strong interactions, represents an important challenge in physics. While Bose-Einstein condensates (BEC) in ultracold atomic gases provide an accessible system with controllable interactions, historically, strongly interacting BECs have been difficult to study because these systems are inherently unstable due to three-body inelastic collisions. We report on work probing strongly interacting $^{85}Rb$ BEC at unitarity using a Feshbach resonance to quickly change the interaction strength. We observe dynamics of the gas before the cloud has lost many atoms or significantly changed its density.

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Authors

  • Philip Makotyn

    JILA, NIST and the University of Colorado

  • Catherine Klauss

    JILA, NIST and the University of Colorado

  • Eric Cornell

    JILA, NIST and the University of Colorado, JILA, NIST and University of Colorado-Boulder, and Department of Physics, University of Colorado-Boulder

  • Deborah Jin

    JILA, NIST and the University of Colorado, JILA, NIST, and University of Colorado-Boulder