Formation of molecules from a Cs Bose-Einstein condensate

An analysis was carried out of the recent Innsbruck experiments [1] on the conversion to molecules of an expanding Bose-Einstein condensate of Cs atoms, using an extremely weak Feshbach resonance. The theory, based on the approach of [2], takes into account atom-molecule and molecule-molecule deactivating collisions. It describes results observed for both ramping and switching schemes used in the experiments, including the exceptionally effective conversion achieved in the switching scheme. A fit of the theory to the experimental data provides an estimate of the resonance strength and the deactivation rates. \newline \newline 1. M. Mark, T. Kraemer, J. Herbig, C. Chin, H.-C. N\"agerl, and R. Grimm, cond-mat/0409737. \newline 2. V. A. Yurovsky and A. Ben-Reuven, Phys. Rev. A {\bf 70}, 013613 (2004).