It has long been predicted that the scattering of ultracold atoms can be altered significantly through a so-called 'Feshbach resonance'. Two such resonances have now been observed in optically trapped Bose-Einstein condensates of sodium atoms by varying an external magnetic field. They gave rise to enhanced inelastic processes and a dispersive variation of the scattering length by a factor of over ten. These resonances open new possibilities for the study and manipulation of Bose-Einstein condensates.Bose-Einstein condensates of atomic gases offer new opportunities for studying quantum-degenerate fluids 1-5 . All the essential properties of Bose condensed systems-the formation and shape of the condensate, the nature of its collective excitations and statistical fluctuations, and the formation and dynamics of solitons and vortices-are determined by the strength of the atomic interactions. In contrast to the situation for superfluid helium, these interactions are weak, allowing the phenomena to be theoretically described from 'first principles'. Furthermore, in atomic gases the interactions can be altered, for instance by employing different species, changing the atomic density, or, as in the present work, merely by varying a magnetic field.At low temperatures, the interaction energy in a cloud of atoms is proportional to the density and a single atomic parameter, the scattering length a which depends on the quantum-mechanical phase shift in an elastic collision. It has been predicted that the scattering length can be modified by applying external magnetic 6-10 , optical 11,12 or radio-frequency 13 (r.f.) fields. Those modifications are only pronounced in a so-called ''Feshbach resonance'' 14 , when a quasibound molecular state has nearly zero energy and couples resonantly to the free state of the colliding atoms. In a timedependent picture, the two atoms are transferred to the quasibound state, 'stick' together and then return to an unbound state. Such a resonance strongly affects the scattering length (elastic channel), but also affects inelastic processes such as dipolar relaxation 6,7 and threebody recombination. Feshbach resonances have so far been studied at much higher energies 15 by varying the collision energy, but here we show that they can be 'tuned' to zero energy to be resonant for ultracold atoms. The different magnetic moments of the free and quasibound states allowed us to tune these resonances with magnetic fields, and as a result, minute changes in the magnetic field strongly affected the properties of a macroscopic system.Above and below a Feshbach resonance, the scattering length a covers the full continuum of positive and negative values. This should allow the realization of condensates over a wide range of interaction strengths. By setting a Ϸ 0, one can create a condensate with essentially non-interacting atoms, and by setting a Ͻ 0 one can make the system unstable and observe its collapse. Rapid tuning of an external magnetic field around a Feshbach resonance will lead to sudden changes of t...

Bose-Einstein condensates of dilute atomic gases, characterized by a macroscopic population of the quantum mechanical ground state, are a new, weakly interacting quantum fluid [1,2,3]. In most experiments condensates in a single weak field seeking state are magnetically trapped. These condensates can be described by a scalar order parameter similar to the spinless superfluid 4 He. Even though alkali atoms have angular momentum, the spin orientation is not a degree of freedom because spin flips lead to untrapped states and are therefore a loss process. In contrast, the recently realized optical trap for sodium condensates [4] confines atoms independently of their spin orientation. This opens the possibility to study spinor condensates which represent a system with a vector order parameter instead of a scalar. Here we report a study of the equilibrium state of spinor condensates in an optical trap. The freedom of spin orientation leads to the formation of spin domains in an external magnetic field. The structure of these domains are illustrated in spin domain diagrams. Combinations of both miscible and immiscible spin components were realized.A variety of new phenomena is predicted [5,6,7] for spinor condensates, such as spin textures, propagation of spin waves and coupling between superfluid flow and atomic spin. To date such effects could only be studied in superfluid 3 He, which can be described by Bose-Einstein condensation of Cooper pairs of quasi particles having both spin and orbital angular momentum [8]. Compared to the strongly interacting 3 He, the properties of weakly interacting BoseEinstein condensates of alkali gases can be calculated by mean field theories in a much more straightforward and simple way.Other systems which go beyond the description with a single scalar order parameter are condensates of two different hyperfine states of 87 Rb confined in magnetic traps. Recent experimental studies have explored the spatial separation of the two components [9,10] and their relative phase [11]. Several theoretical papers describe their structure [12,13,14,15,16,17,18] and their collective excitations [19,20,21,22].Compared to these two-component condensates, spinor condensates have several new features including the vector character of the order parameter and the changed role of spin relaxation collisions which allow for population exchange among hyperfine states without trap loss. In contrast, for 87 Rb experiments trap loss due to spin relaxation severely limits the lifetime.We consider an F = 1 spinor condensate subject to spin relaxation, in which two m F = 0 atoms can collide and produce an m F = +1 and an m F = −1 atom and vice versa. We investigate the distribution of hyperfine states and the spatial distribution in equilibrium assuming conservation of the total spin. The ground state spinor wave function is found by minimizing the free energy [5]where kinetic energy terms are neglected in the ThomasFermi approximation which is valid as long as the dimension of spin domains (typically 50 µm) is ...

Bose-Einstein condensates of sodium atoms have been confined in an optical dipole trap using a single focused infrared laser beam. This eliminates the restrictions of magnetic traps for further studies of atom lasers and Bose-Einstein condensates. More than five million condensed atoms were transferred into the optical trap. Densities of up to $3 \times 10^{15} cm^{-3}$ of Bose condensed atoms were obtained, allowing for a measurement of the three-body decay rate constant for sodium condensates as $K_3 = (1.1 \pm 0.3) \times 10^{-30} cm^6 s^{-1}$. At lower densities, the observed 1/e lifetime was more than 10 sec. Simultaneous confinement of Bose-Einstein condensates in several hyperfine states was demonstrated.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

Properties of a Bose-Einstein condensate were studied by stimulated, two-photon Bragg scattering. The high momentum and energy resolution of this method allowed a spectroscopic measurement of the mean-field energy and of the intrinsic momentum uncertainty of the condensate. The coherence length of the condensate was shown to be equal to its size. Bragg spectroscopy can be used to determine the dynamic structure factor over a wide range of energy and momentum transfers.[S0031-9007(99)

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