Directional spatial structure of dissociated elongated molecular condensates

Abstract

Ultra-cold clouds of dimeric molecules can dissociate into quantum mechanically correlated constituent atoms that are either bosons or fermions. We theoretically model the dissociation of cigar shaped molecular condensates, for which this difference manifests as complementary geometric structures of the dissociated atoms. For atomic bosons beams form along the long axis of the molecular condensate. For atomic fermions beams form along the short axis. This directional beaming simplifies the measurement of correlations between the atoms through relative number squeezing.