Molecule formation as a diagnostic tool for second order correlations of ultra-cold gases

TL;DR

This paper investigates how the quantum statistics of molecules formed from ultracold gases reflect the initial atomic states, using momentum distribution and correlation functions to diagnose second-order correlations.

Contribution

It introduces a method to use molecular second-order correlations as a diagnostic tool for the initial quantum state of ultracold atomic gases, including BEC, Fermi gas, and BCS superfluid.

Findings

BEC and BCS states produce coherent molecular fields with narrow momentum distributions.

Normal Fermi gases lead to broad momentum distributions and thermal statistics.

Molecular correlations can reveal the second-order correlations of the initial atomic state.

Abstract

We calculate the momentum distribution and the second-order correlation function in momentum space, $g^{(2)}({\bf p},{\bf p}',t)$ for molecular dimers that are coherently formed from an ultracold atomic gas by photoassociation or a Feshbach resonance. We investigate using perturbation theory how the quantum statistics of the molecules depend on the initial state of the atoms by considering three different initial states: a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC), a normal Fermi gas of ultra-cold atoms, and a BCS-type superfluid Fermi gas. The cases of strong and weak coupling to the molecular field are discussed. It is found that BEC and BCS states give rise to an essentially coherent molecular field with a momentum distribution determined by the zero-point motion in the confining potential. On the other hand, a normal Fermi gas and the unpaired atoms in the BCS state give rise to a molecular field with a broad momentum distribution and thermal number statistics. It is shown that the first-order correlations of the molecules can be used to measure second-order correlations of the initial atomic state.