Production of Long-Lived Ultracold Li2 Molecules from a Fermi gas

TL;DR

This paper reports the successful creation of long-lived ultracold Li2 molecules from a Fermi gas using Feshbach resonance, achieving high transfer efficiency and studying their properties and stability.

Contribution

It demonstrates a high-efficiency method to produce and trap ultracold Li2 molecules from a Fermi gas, with detailed analysis of their lifetime and thermodynamic behavior.

Findings

Atom-molecule transfer efficiency up to 85%

Molecules remain trapped for 0.5 seconds

Molecular temperature close to Bose-Einstein condensation threshold

Abstract

We create weakly-bound Li2 molecules from a degenerate two component Fermi gas by sweeping a magnetic field across a Feshbach resonance. The atom-molecule transfer efficiency can reach 85% and is studied as a function of magnetic field and initial temperature. The bosonic molecules remain trapped for 0.5 s and their temperature is within a factor of 2 from the Bose-Einstein condensation temperature. A thermodynamical model reproduces qualitatively the experimental findings.