Scott E. Pollack

Universality in three- and four-body bound states of ultracold atoms.

More Is Different, Few Is Exotic As powerful as theoretical physics can be, when it comes to describing the dynamics of several interacting particles, it stumbles at three. This few-body physics is interesting in many contexts, particularly interactions within the nucleus and between atoms and molecules. Although predicted 40 years ago for the special case of resonant interaction, which occurs at the edge of where two-particle bound states start to form, Efimov trimers were only recently observed in ultracold Bose gases. More work followed, revealing evidence of multiple trimer, and even tetramer, states. Now, Pollack et al. (p. 1683, published online 19 November; see the Perspective by Modugno) observe as many as 11 features near a lithium resonance that can be directly related to different few-body processes. The positions of the features with respect to each other are in excellent agreement with the theoretical prediction, although some deviations, attributed to short-range interactions, present a challenge for a future, more detailed theory. Cold lithium gas reveals a universal lineup of Efimov trimers and associated tetramers. Under certain circumstances, three or more interacting particles may form bound states. Although the general few-body problem is not analytically solvable, the so-called Efimov trimers appear for a system of three particles with resonant two-body interactions. The binding energies of these trimers are predicted to be universally connected to each other, independent of the microscopic details of the interaction. By exploiting a Feshbach resonance to widely tune the interactions between trapped ultracold lithium atoms, we find evidence for two universally connected Efimov trimers and their associated four-body bound states. A total of 11 precisely determined three- and four-body features are found in the inelastic-loss spectrum. Their relative locations on either side of the resonance agree well with universal theory, whereas a systematic deviation from universality is found when comparing features across the resonance.

Extreme Tunability of Interactions in a 7Li Bose-Einstein Condensate

We use a Feshbach resonance to tune the scattering length a of a Bose-Einstein condensate of 7Li in the |F=1,mF=1> state. Using the spatial extent of the trapped condensate, we extract a over a range spanning 7 decades from small attractive interactions to extremely strong repulsive interactions. The shallow zero crossing in the wing of the Feshbach resonance enables the determination of a as small as 0.01 Bohr radii. Evidence of the weak anisotropic magnetic dipole interaction is obtained by comparison with different trap geometries for small a.

Temporal Extent of Surface Potentials between Closely Spaced Metals

Variations in the electrostatic surface potential between the proof mass and electrode housing in the space-based gravitational wave mission Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) is one of the largest contributors of noise at frequencies below a few mHz. Torsion balances provide an ideal test bed for investigating these effects in conditions emulative of LISA. Our apparatus consists of a Au coated Cu plate brought near a Au coated Si plate pendulum suspended from a thin W wire. We have measured a white noise level of 30 microV/sqrt Hz above approximately 0.1 mHz, rising at lower frequencies, for the surface potential variations between these two closely spaced metals.

Collective excitation of a Bose-Einstein condensate by modulation of the atomic scattering length

We excite the lowest-lying quadrupole mode of a Bose-Einstein condensate by modulating the atomic scattering length via a Feshbach resonance. Excitation occurs at various modulation frequencies, and resonances located at the natural quadrupole frequency of the condensate and at the first harmonic are observed. We also investigate the amplitude of the excited mode as a function of modulation depth. Numerical simulations based on a variational calculation agree with our experimental results and provide insight into the observed behavior.

Dissipative transport of a Bose-Einstein condensate

We investigate the effects of impurities, either correlated disorder or a single Gaussian defect, on the collective dipole motion of a Bose-Einstein condensate of {sup 7}Li in an optical trap. We find that this motion is damped at a rate dependent on the impurity strength, condensate center-of-mass velocity, and interatomic interactions. Damping in the Thomas-Fermi regime depends universally on the disordered potential strength scaled to the condensate chemical potential and the condensate velocity scaled to the speed of sound. The damping rate is comparatively small in the weakly interacting regime, and, in this case, is accompanied by strong condensate fragmentation. In situ and time-of-flight images of the atomic cloud provide evidence that this fragmentation is driven by dark soliton formation.