Dissociation of ultracold molecules with Feshbach resonances -: art. no. 031601

Ultracold molecules are associated from an atomic Bose-Einstein condensate by ramping a magnetic field across a Feshbach resonance. The reverse ramp dissociates the molecules. The kinetic energy released in the dissociation process is used to measure the widths of four Feshbach resonances in Rb-87. This method to determine the width works remarkably well for narrow resonances even in the presence of significant magnetic-field noise. In addition, a quasimonoenergetic atomic wave is created by jumping the magnetic field across the Feshbach resonance.