title: Dissociation and decay of ultracold sodium molecules.
abstract: The dissociation of ultracold molecules was studied by ramping an external magnetic field through a Feshbach resonance. The observed dissociation energies directly yielded the strength of the atom-molecule coupling. They showed nonlinear dependence on the ramp speed. This was explained by a Wigner threshold law which predicts that the decay rate of the molecules above threshold increases with the density of states. In addition, inelastic molecule-molecule and molecule-atom collisions were characterized.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, MIT-Harvard Center for Ultracold Atoms, and Research Laboratory of Electronics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Mukaiyama
authors.forename: J R
authors.initials: JR
authors.lastname: Abo-Shaeer
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.forename: J K
authors.initials: JK
authors.lastname: Chin
authors.forename: W
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Ketterle