We consider a dense ultracold Fermi gas in the presence of a Feshbach resonance. We investigate how the threshold for bound state formation, which is just at the Feshbach resonance for a dilute gas, is modified due to the presence of the Fermi sea. We make use of a preceding framework of handling this many-body problem. We restrict ourselves to the simple case where the chemical potential μ is negative, which allows us to cover in particular the classical limit where the effect is seen to disappear. We show that, within a simple approach where basically only the effect of Pauli exclusion is included, the Fermi sea produces a large shift of the threshold, which is of the order of the width of the Feshbach resonance. This is in agreement with very recent experimental findings.
We use laser light near resonant with a molecular bound-to-bound transition to control a magnetic Feshbach resonance in ultracold Fermi gases of
40K atoms. The spectrum of excited molecular states is measured by applying a laser field that couples the ground Feshbach molecular state to electronically excited molecular states. Nine strong bound-to-bound resonances are observed below the
2P1/2+2S1/2 threshold. We use radio-frequency spectroscopy to characterize the laser-dressed bound state near a specific bound-to-bound resonance and show clearly the shift of the magnetic Feshbach resonance using light. The demonstrated technology could be used to modify interatomic interactions with high spatial and temporal resolutions in the crossover regime from a Bose-Einstein condensate to a Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer superfluid.
We study the superfluid state of atomic Fermi gases using a BCS-Bose-Einstein-condensation crossover theory. Our approach emphasizes noncondensed fermion pairs which strongly hybridize with their (Feshbach-induced) molecular boson counterparts. These pairs lead to pseudogap effects above
Tc and non-BCS characteristics below. We discuss how these effects influence the experimental signatures of superfluidity.