Dissociation of ultracold molecules with Feshbach resonances

Stephan Dürr, Thomas Volz, Gerhard Rempe

Published 2004-05-26, updated 2004-08-10Version 2

Ultracold molecules are associated from an atomic Bose-Einstein condensate by ramping a magnetic field across a Feshbach resonance. The reverse ramp dissociates the molecules. The kinetic energy released in the dissociation process is used to measure the widths of 4 Feshbach resonances in 87Rb. This method to determine the width works remarkably well for narrow resonances even in the presence of significant magnetic-field noise. In addition, a quasi-mono-energetic atomic wave is created by jumping the magnetic field across the Feshbach resonance.