Statistical mechanics of a Feshbach-coupled Bose-Fermi gas in an optical lattice
Ole Søe Sørensen, Nicolai Gayle Nygaard, P. B. Blakie
We consider an atomic Fermi gas confined in a uniform optical lattice potential, where the atoms can pair into molecules via a magnetic-field-controlled narrow Feshbach resonance. The phase diagram of the resulting atom-molecule mixture in chemical and thermal equilibria is determined numerically in the absence of interactions under the constraint of particle conservation. In the limiting cases of vanishing or large lattice depth we derive simple analytical results for important thermodynamic quantities. One such quantity is the dissociation energy, defined as the detuning of the molecular energy spectrum with respect to the atomic one for which half of the atoms have been converted into dimers. Importantly we find that the dissociation energy has a nonmonotonic dependence on lattice depth.
arXiv:0810.2696•Physical Review A•May 1, 2009•2 citations