We have conducted a study of atom-dimer scattering in an ultracold three-component Fermi gas consisting of 6Li atoms in three different hyperfine states |1>,|2> and |3>.
For this we have prepared three different mixtures of atoms and dimers and observed their decay via inelastic atom-dimer collisions. In the |1>-|23> atom-dimer mixture we have observed resonant enhancement of the loss at the crossings of two Efimov-like trimer states with the |1>-|23> atom-dimer threshold. We have also found that these trimer states can cause a suppression of |3>-|12> → |1>-|23> exchange reactions in the |3>-|12> mixture, which allows to control the rate constants for these processes.
For more details on these results see arXiv:1003.0600

Two-body loss coefficient of the I1>-I23> mixture vs. magnetic field: the red line is a fit according to universal theory..

Congratulations Timo!
The thesis is available here:
Few-body physics in ultracold Fermi gases

Recently Gerhard Zürn handed in his diploma thesis which is about the
"Realization of an Optical Microtrap for a Highly Degenerate Fermi Gas" .
It is now available online: thesis-gerhard.pdf.

In the last few weeks we accomplished another milestone on our way to a mesoscopic Fermi system the realization of a small volume optical dipole trap with high trapping frequencies ("microtrap"). More information will be provided in the diploma thesis of G. Zürn which will appear in a few weeks.

Shown is the optical density of the large volume dipole trap (a), the transfer between dipole trap and microtrap (b) and only the microtrap (c).

Andre Wenz just handed in his diploma thesis with the title
"Few-Body Physics in a Three-Component Fermi Gas".
It is now available online at: thesis-andre.pdf.

Our work on three-component Fermi gases has been published in Physical Review Letters.
It is now available online at PRL 101, 203202.

The "Quark-Gluon Plasma meets Cold Atoms" introductory workshop at GSI in
Darmstadt took place on september 25th to 27th. Pictures are available online.
For more information visit the EMMI homepage.
Emmi workshop at GSI

The next diploma thesis done in our group was just handed in by Matthias Kohnen.
The title is: "Ultracold Fermi Mixtures in an Optical Dipole Trap"
and it is now available online at:
diplomarbeit-matthias

Some of us are currently spending an enjoyable time at the Niels-Bohr-Institute in Copenhagen discussing ultracold atoms and Quark-Gluon Plasmas. As you can see on the picture, we share quite some excitement on trimers with the Innsbruck Cesium team!
workshopping trimers: Selim, Francesca and Andre

Recently we managed to prepare a three-component degenerate Fermi gas of ⁶Li with 50000 atoms in each state at a temperature of 215 nK, which corresponds to T/T_F=0.37.
We studied the collisional stability of the gas in the magnetic field range from 0 to 750 G and found a broad and pronounced loss feature at 130 G. At approximately 580 G the sample remains quite stable, with 1/e lifetimes exceeding 30 s.
a.) Magnetic field dependence of the remaining fraction of a three-state mixture
b.) two-component mixture as a reference
c.) scattering lengths in all possible channels

For a more quantitative analysis we deduced the three-body loss coefficient K₃ from lifetime measurements.
The new results are available at arXiv:0806.0587.