The BEC Near a Feshbach Resonance: A Superfluid of Mutually Coherent Condensates

Robin Côté, Eddy Timmermans, Paolo Tommasini

Yuki Kawaguchi, Tetsuo Ohmi

We consider a single vortex in a superfluid Fermi gas in the BCS-BEC crossover regime near a Feshbach resonance. The effect of the molecular Bose-Einstein condensate upon the vortex structure is discussed within the mean field approximation at zero temperature. Using the self-consistent Bogoliubov-de Gennes equation of the fermion-boson coupled model, we calculate density distributions of atoms and molecules. As the number of the molecules increases, both atomic and molecular density changes from BCS-like distribution to BEC-like. We also study the change of the vortex core size in the crossover regime.

Carl Wieman

Takeshi Mizushima, Masanori Ichioka, K. Machida

The visualization of chiral p-wave superfluidity in Fermi gases near p-wave Feshbach resonances is theoretically examined. It is proposed that the superfluidity becomes detectable in the entire BCS-BEC regimes through (i) vortex visualization by the density depletion inside the vortex core and (ii) intrinsic angular momentum in vortex-free states. It is revealed that both (i) and (ii) are closely connected with the Majorana zero energy mode of the vortex core and the edge mode, which survive until the strong coupling BCS regime is approached from the weak coupling limit and vanish in the Bose-Einstein condensation regime.

JM Johnny Vogels

Juan Manuel Pino

A dilute gas Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) near a Feshbach resonance offers a system that can be tuned from the well-understood regime of weak interactions to the complex regime of strong interactions. Strong interactions play a central role in the phenomena of superfluidity in liquid He, and theoretical treatments for this regime have existed since the 1950’s. However, these theories have not been experimentally tested as superfluid He offers no similar mechanism with which to tune the interactions. In dilute gas condensates near a Feshbach resonance, where interactions can be tuned, strong interactions have proven difficult to study due to the condensate’s metastable nature with respect to the formation of weakly bound molecules. In this thesis, I introduce an experimental system and novel probes of the gas that have been specifically designed to study strongly interacting BECs. I present Bragg spectroscopy measurements that have accessed this regime, as well as proof-of-principle experiments using photon-counting for Bragg spectroscopy at low-momentum. Finally, I show preliminary data using contact spectroscopy, which is a method that could lead to the first measurements of the predicted interaction energies for a dilute Bose gas of atoms in the strongly interacting regime.