Strongly Enhanced Inelastic Collisions in a Bose-Einstein Condensate near Feshbach Resonances

Abstract

The properties of Bose-Einstein condensed gases can be strongly altered by tuning the external magnetic field near a Feshbach resonance. Feshbach resonances affect elastic collisions and lead to the observed modification of the scattering length. However, as we report here, the observed rate of inelastic collisions was strongly enhanced in a sodium Bose-Einstein condensate when the scattering length was tuned to both larger or smaller values than the off-resonant value. These strong losses impose severe limitations for using Feshbach resonances to tune the properties of Bose-Einstein condensates.