Pair Wave Functions in Atomic Fermi Condensates

TL;DR

This paper interprets recent fermionic atom condensation experiments as evidence of spatially correlated Cooper pairs, not bosonic molecules, and proposes experiments to further explore these pairs.

Contribution

It introduces a mean-field resonance superfluidity theory explaining fermionic condensation as Cooper pairs with coherence lengths comparable to interatomic spacing.

Findings

Condensed objects are Cooper pairs, not molecules.

Coherence length of pairs is comparable to mean interparticle distance.

Proposed experiments to probe the nature of these pairs.

Abstract

Recent experiments have observed condensation behavior in a strongly interacting system of fermionic atoms. We interpret these observations in terms of a mean-field version of resonance superfluidity theory. We find that the objects condensed are not bosonic molecules composed of bound fermion pairs, but are rather spatially correlated Cooper pairs whose coherence length is comparable to the mean spacing between atoms. We propose experiments that will help to further probe these novel pairs.