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A: Fachverband Atomphysik
A 31: Ultra-Cold Atoms, Ions and BEC IV (with Q)
A 31.3: Talk
Thursday, March 5, 2009, 17:30–17:45, VMP 6 HS-C
Few-body physics in a three-component Fermi gas — •Timo Ottenstein1, Thomas Lompe1, Andre Wenz1, Gerhard Zürn1, and Selim Jochim1,2 — 1Max-Planck Institut für Kernphysik, Saupfercheckweg 1, 69117 Heidelberg — 2Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg
Here we report on our experiments studying a three-component Fermi gas in thermal equilibrium consisting of atoms in the three lowest magnetic substates of 6Li. Our first experiments analyzed the collisional stability of the gas in dependence of the two-body interaction strength, which can be tuned by means of Feshbach resonances [1]. Three body-collisions lead to strong variation of the stablility as a function of the applied magnetic field, including a strongly enhanced trap loss at 127 G. It turns out that the behaviour of three-body loss over the adressed magnetic field range can be explained by the presence of a trimer state consisting of one atom in each of the three states, which crosses the continuum twice at different magnetic field values [2]. The physics of this trimer state is comparable to Efimov’s scenario in bosonic systems.
Furthermore, the interaction properties of this three-component Fermi gas resemble SU(3) symmetry, making it a promising candidate to study phenomena related to QCD and baryon formation. By addition of an optical lattice, the SU(3) Hubbard model can be studied, in which new and interesting quantum phases are predicted.
[1] T.B. Ottenstein et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 101, 203202 (2008)
[2] E. Braaten et al., arXiv 0811.3578 (2008)