Coherent atom-molecule oscillations in a Bose-Fermi mixture

We create atom-molecule superpositions in a Bose-Fermi mixture of 87Rb and 40K atoms. The superpositions are generated by ramping an applied magnetic field near an interspecies Fano-Feshbach resonance to coherently couple atom and molecule states. Rabi- and Ramsey-type experiments show oscillations in the molecule population that persist as long as 150
s and have up to 50% contrast. The frequencies of these oscillations are magnetic-field dependent and consistent with the predicted molecule binding energy. This quantum superposition involves a molecule and a pair of free particles with different statistics
i.e., bosons and fermions and furthers exploration of atom-molecule coherence in systems without a Bose-Einstein condensate.