Hannover 2010 – scientific programme
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A: Fachverband Atomphysik
A 12: Atomic Clusters I
A 12.2: Invited Talk
Wednesday, March 10, 2010, 14:30–15:00, F 303
Few-body physics with ultracold atoms — •Selim Jochim1, 2, Thomas Lompe1,2, Martin Ries1,2, Friedhelm Serwane1,2, Philipp Simon1,2, Andre Wenz1,2, and Gerhard Zürn1,2 — 1Physikalisches Institut, Universität Heidelberg — 2Max-Planck-Institut für Kernphysik, Heidelberg
During the past years, ultracold atoms have been a fantastic playground to study few-body physics in the universal regime, in which the properties of bound states do not depend on particular details of the interatomic potential, but only on a few numbers, such as the scattering length. The major ingredient in current experiments is the tunabilty of the scattering length using an externally applied magnetic field using Feshbach resonances. In 2003, this allowed the creation of diatomic Feshbach-molecules, which have been an important starting point for many important milestones, such as the realization of the BEC-BCS crossover, or the controlled preparation of ultracold ground state molecules. Associated with every universal two-body bound state is an infinite series of three-body bound states, as was predicted in 1970 by Vitaly Efimov. Such Efimov states have first been observed in 2006 with ultracold bosonic Cs atoms in the form of three-body scattering resonances. More recently, our group has found evidence for universal three body bound states between three distinguishable fermionic 6Li atoms. Such a three-component system offers the possibility to study many body physics which because of its SU(3)-symmetry could resemble the simplest models of QCD.