We investigate the correlation properties of a one-dimensional interacting Bose gas by loading a magnetically trapped 87Rb Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) into a deep two-dimensional optical lattice. We measure the three-body recombination rate for both the BEC in the magnetic trap and the BEC loaded into the optical lattice. The recombination rate coefficient is a factor of 7 smaller in the lattice, which we interpret as a reduction in the local three-body correlation function in the 1D case. This is a signature of correlation intermediate between that of the uncorrelated, phase coherent, 1D, mean-field regime and the strongly correlated Tonks-Girardeau regime.

We investigate the stability of a three spin state mixture of ultracold fermionic 6 Li atoms over a range of magnetic fields encompassing three Feshbach resonances. For most field values, we attribute decay of the atomic population to three-body processes involving one atom from each spin state and find that the three-body loss coefficient varies by over four orders of magnitude. We observe high stability when at least two of the three scattering lengths are small, rapid loss near the Feshbach resonances, and two unexpected resonant loss features. At our highest fields, where all pairwise scattering lengths are approaching at = −2140a0, we measure a three-body loss coefficient L3 ≃ 5 × 10 −22 cm 6 /s and a trend toward lower decay rates for higher fields indicating that future studies of color superfluidity and trion formation in a SU(3) symmetric Fermi gas may be feasible.

We report the observation of strongly damped dipole oscillations of a quantum degenerate 1D atomic Bose gas in a combined harmonic and optical lattice potential. Damping is significant for very shallow axial lattices (0.25 photon recoil energies), and increases dramatically with increasing lattice depth, such that the gas becomes nearly immobile for times an order of magnitude longer than the single-particle tunneling time. Surprisingly, we see no broadening of the atomic quasimomentum distribution after damped motion. Recent theoretical work suggests that quantum fluctuations can strongly damp dipole oscillations of 1D atomic Bose gas, providing a possible explanation for our observations.PACS numbers: 03.75. Kk, 05.60.Gg, 73.43.Nq The ability of highly degenerate quantum systems to sustain dissipationless flow is one of the most striking manifestations of quantum mechanics. However, transport in such systems can be dramatically modified by the presence of a relatively weak, but rapidly spatially varying ("corrugated") potential along the transport axis. For example, the periodic potential of an optical lattice inhibits transport in a degenerate Fermi atomic gas [1, 2, 3], but not, in general, in a degenerate Bose gas (i.e., Bose-Einstein Condensate (BEC)) [4,5]. However, under certain conditions, highly dissipative transport in a BEC in an optical lattice [6,7,8] can arise from nonlinear dynamical instabilities [9,10,11]. In low dimensional systems, of which 1D atomic gases [12,13,14,15,16] and superconducting nanowires [17] are important experimentally realized examples, a corrugated potential can cause dramatic changes in ground state and transport properties.We study inhibited transport in a 1D Bose gas in the presence of an optical lattice along the 1D axis. In the absence of such a lattice, dipole oscillations are undamped [14], since it is a general result that the dipole mode of a harmonically confined gas is unaffected by 2-body interactions (generalized Kohn's theorem) [18]. This result does not strictly hold for a combined harmonic and periodic potential; nevertheless, undamped oscillations have been observed in 3D BECs for small amplitudes and weak interactions [5,19].In this Letter we report a study of strongly damped dipole oscillations of a 1D Bose gas in a combined harmonic and periodic potential, under conditions for which undamped motion has been observed previously for 3D BECs. This striking difference between 1D and 3D was recently reported, qualitatively, in Ref. [13]. Here we measure the damped motion as a function of axial lattice depth. Significant damping is induced by very shallow lattices, and in deeper lattices the motion is overdamped to the degree that the gas is nearly immobile for times an order of magnitude longer than the single-particle tunneling time. We emphasize, and discuss further below, that the inhibited transport is not due to Bloch oscillations [4,20], where transport is frustrated by Bragg reflection at the Brillouin zone (BZ) boundary, as has been seen in previou...

We observe enhanced three-body recombination in a three-component ;{6}Li Fermi gas attributable to an excited Efimov trimer state intersecting the three-atom scattering threshold near 895 G. From measurements of the recombination rate we determine the Efimov parameters kappa_{*} and eta_{*} for the universal region above 600 G which includes three overlapping Feshbach resonances. The value of kappa_{*} also predicts the locations of loss features previously observed near 130 and 500 G [T. B. Ottenstein, Phys. Rev. Lett. 101, 203202 (2008)10.1103/PhysRevLett.101.203202; J. H. Huckans, Phys. Rev. Lett. 102, 165302 (2009)10.1103/PhysRevLett.102.165302] suggesting they are associated with a ground-state Efimov trimer near threshold. We also report on the realization of a degenerate three-component Fermi gas with approximate SU(3) symmetry.