Directional spatial structure of dissociated elongated molecular condensates

TL;DR

This paper models how dissociation of elongated molecular condensates produces directionally distinct atomic beams for bosons and fermions, aiding correlation measurements.

Contribution

It introduces a theoretical model showing how molecular dissociation results in different geometric atomic structures based on particle statistics.

Findings

Bosonic atoms form beams along the condensate's long axis.

Fermionic atoms form beams along the short axis.

Directional beaming facilitates correlation measurements.

Abstract

Ultra-cold clouds of dimeric molecules can dissociate into quantum mechanically correlated constituent atoms that are either bosons or fermions. We theoretically model the dissociation of cigar shaped molecular condensates, for which this difference manifests as complementary geometric structures of the dissociated atoms. For atomic bosons beams form along the long axis of the molecular condensate. For atomic fermions beams form along the short axis. This directional beaming simplifies the measurement of correlations between the atoms through relative number squeezing.