English

Confinement controlled dissociation of a molecular Bose-Einstein condensate

Other Condensed Matter 2009-11-13 v1

Abstract

We study the collective two-channel dissociation dynamics of a molecular Bose-Einstein condensate into bosonic fragments under tight harmonic confinement. Bose-stimulated dissociation in either channel can only take place provided that the respective trap size lil_i for the fragments is large with respect to the healing length ζi\zeta_i of the atom-molecule resonance. Thus, even when both channels are equally coupled, differences in mass or in dynamical polarizability enable the control of the reaction outcome by variation of the trap frequency. In particular, if l1>ζ1l_1>\zeta_1 and l2<ζ2l_2<\zeta_2, only the first channel will be amplified. This behavior demonstrate a unique feature of 'superchemistry' wherein a chemical reaction may be controlled by the manipulation of the reaction vessel.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0711.0861,
  title  = {Confinement controlled dissociation of a molecular Bose-Einstein condensate},
  author = {I. Tikhonenkov and A. Vardi},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0711.0861},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

18 pages, 6 figures