Extreme tunability of interactions in a 7Li Bose-Einstein condensate

Phys Rev Lett. 2009 Mar 6;102(9):090402. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.102.090402. Epub 2009 Mar 6.

Abstract

We use a Feshbach resonance to tune the scattering length a of a Bose-Einstein condensate of 7Li in the |F=1,mF=1> state. Using the spatial extent of the trapped condensate, we extract a over a range spanning 7 decades from small attractive interactions to extremely strong repulsive interactions. The shallow zero crossing in the wing of the Feshbach resonance enables the determination of a as small as 0.01 Bohr radii. Evidence of the weak anisotropic magnetic dipole interaction is obtained by comparison with different trap geometries for small a.