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arXiv:1002.1542 · Physical Review A

Molecular Bose-Einstein condensation in a Bose gas with a wide Feshbach resonance at finite temperatures

Zeng-Qiang Yu, Lan Yin

Published Feb 17, 2010• 8 citations
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Abstract

Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) of Feshbach molecules in a homogeneous Bose gas is studied at finite temperatures in a single-channel mean-field approach where the Hartree-Fock energy and pairing gap are determined self-consistently. In the molecular-BEC state, the atomic excitation is gapped and the molecular excitation is gapless. The binding energy of Feshbach molecules is shifted from the vacuum value by many-body effects. When the scattering length ${a}_{s}$ of the atoms is negative, the system is subject to mechanical collapse due to negative compressibility. The system is stable in most regions with positive scattering lengths. However, at low temperatures near the resonance, the molecular-BEC state vanishes, and the coherent mixture of atomic and molecular BEC is subject to mechanical collapse.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.81.023613

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Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) of Feshbach molecules in a homogeneous Bose gas is studied at finite temperatures in a single-channel mean-field approach where the Hartree-Fock energy and pairing gap are determined self-consistently. In the molecular-BEC state, the atomic excitation is gapped and the molecular excitation is gapless. The binding energy of Feshbach molecules is shifted from the vacuum value by many-body effects. When the scattering length as{a}_{s}as​ of the atoms is negative, the system is subject to mechanical collapse due to negative compressibility. The system is stable in most regions with positive scattering lengths. However, at low temperatures near the resonance, the molecular-BEC state vanishes, and the coherent mixture of atomic and molecular BEC is subject to mechanical collapse.
In this paper, we study the phase diagram of a homogeneous Bose gas with a repulsive interaction near a wide Feshbach resonance at zero temperature. The Bose-Einstein-condensation (BEC) state of atoms is a metastable state. When the scattering length aaa exceeds a critical value depending on the atom density nnn, na3>0.035n{a}^{3}>0.035na3>0.035, the molecular excitation energy is imaginary and the atomic BEC state is dynamically unstable against molecule formation. The BEC state of diatomic molecules has lower energy, where the atomic excitation is gapped and the molecular excitation is gapless. However, when the scattering length is above another critical value, na3>0.0164n{a}^{3}>0.0164na3>0.0164, the molecular BEC state becomes an unstable coherent mixture of atoms and molecules. In both BEC states, the binding energy of diatomic molecules is reduced due to the many-body effect.
We consider the properties of a gas of bosonic diatomic molecules in the limit when few of the molecules are dissociated. Taking into account the effects of dissociation and scattering among molecules and atoms, we calculate the dispersion relation for a molecule, and the thermal depletion of the condensate. We calculate the dependence of the Bose-Einstein-condensation (BEC) temperature of a uniform gas on the atom-atom scattering length, and conclude that, for a broad Feshbach resonance, the condensation temperature increases as the molecular state becomes less strongly bound, thereby giving rise to a maximum in the transition temperature in the BEC-BCS crossover. We also argue on general grounds that, for a gas in a harmonic trap and for a narrow Feshbach resonance, the condensation temperature will decrease with increasing scattering length.
We investigate the crossover from BCS pairing to molecular Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) in an atomic gas with two fermion species with masses ${m}_{\ensuremath{\uparrow}}\ensuremath{\ne}{m}_{\ensuremath{\downarrow}}$ tuned through a Feshbach resonance. We present results for the T=0T=0T=0 equation of state as a function of the scattering length including the effects of Gaussian fluctuations about the mean field ground state. We compute the ground state energy as a function of ${m}_{\ensuremath{\uparrow}}/{m}_{\ensuremath{\downarrow}}$ at unitarity and find excellent agreement with the quantum Monte Carlo result for ${m}_{\ensuremath{\uparrow}}/{m}_{\ensuremath{\downarrow}}=6.67$ for a 40K^{40}\mathrm{K}40K-6Li^{6}\mathrm{Li}6Li mixture. We show that the dimer scattering length in the BEC limit as a function of ${m}_{\ensuremath{\uparrow}}/{m}_{\ensuremath{\downarrow}}$ compares well with the exact four-body results of Petrov et al. [J. Phys. B 38, S645 (2005)]. We also derive the condition for trapping frequencies to obtain an unpolarized gas in a harmonic trap.
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.
We explore the Bose condensed phases of an atomic gas on the molecular side of a Feshbach resonance. In the absence of atom-molecule and molecule-molecule scattering, we show that the atomic condensate is either a saddle point of the free energy with energy always exceeding that of the molecular condensate, or has a negative compressibility (hence unstable to density fluctuations). Therefore no phase transition occurs between the atomic and molecular condensates. We also show that a repulsive molecule-molecule scattering can stabilize a sufficiently dense atomic condensate, leading to the possibility of a phase transition. We caution that three-body processes may render this transition unobservable.
We study the steady state of a zero-temperature Bose gas near a Feshbach or photoassociation resonance using a two-channel mean-field model that incorporates atomic and molecular condensates, as well as correlated atom pairs originating from dissociation of molecules into pairs of atoms. We start from a many-body Hamiltonian for atom-molecule conversion, and derive the time-dependent version of the mean-field theory. The stationary solution of the time-dependent model is rendered unique with an approximation that entails that all noncondensate atoms are correlated, as if emerging from dissociation of molecules. The steady state is solved numerically, but limiting cases are also found analytically. The system has a phase transition in which the atomic condensate emerges in a nonanalytic fashion. We quantify the scaling of the observable quantities, such as fractions of atomic and molecular condensates, with the detuning and the atom-molecule conversion strength. Qualitatively, the dependence on detuning rounds out with increasing coupling strength. A study of the thermodynamics shows that the pressure of the atom-molecule system is negative, even on the molecule side of the resonance. This indicates the possibility of mechanical instability.