arXiv:physics/0210131
Rapid Adiabatic Passage from an Atomic to a Molecular Condensate
Matt Mackie, Andrew Carmichael, Kostrun, Marijan, R.J. Perkins, Chen Xu, Zhen Yi, Kalle‐Antti Suominen, Juha Javanainen
Abstract
We examine collective magnetoassociation of a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC), focusing on rapid adiabatic passage from atoms to molecules induced by a sweep of the magnetic field across a wide (>~ 10 G) Feshbach resonance in 85Rb. This problem raises an interest because strong magnetoassociation is expected to favor the creation of molecular-dissociated atom pairs over the formation of molecular BEC [Javanainen and Mackie, Phys. Rev. Lett. 88, 090403 (2002)]. Nevertheless, the conversion to atom pairs is found to depend on the direction of the sweep, so that a system initially above threshold (open dissociation channel) may in fact give near-complete conversion to molecules.