We demonstrate optical tuning of the scattering length in a Bose-Einstein condensate as predicted by Fedichev et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 77, 2913 (1996)]. In our experiment, atoms in a ${}^{\mathrm{87}}\mathrm{R}\mathrm{b}$ condensate are exposed to laser light which is tuned close to the transition frequency to an excited molecular state. By controlling the power and detuning of the laser beam we can change the atomic scattering length over a wide range. In view of laser-driven atomic losses, we use Bragg spectroscopy as a fast method to measure the scattering length of the atoms.

We produce Bose-Einstein condensates of two different species, ${}^{87}\mathrm{Rb}$ and ${}^{41}\mathrm{K}$, in an optical dipole trap in proximity of interspecies Feshbach resonances. We discover and characterize two Feshbach resonances, located around 35 and 79 G, by observing the three-body losses and the elastic cross section. The narrower resonance is exploited to create a double species condensate with tunable interactions. Our system opens the way to the exploration of double species Mott insulators and, more in general, of the quantum phase diagram of the two-species Bose-Hubbard model.

Building on the recent experimental observation with ultracold atoms, we report the first experimental evidence of Efimov physics in a heteronuclear system. A mixture of ${}^{41}\mathrm{K}$ and ${}^{87}\mathrm{Rb}$ atoms was cooled to few hundred nanokelvins and stored in an optical dipole trap. Exploiting a broad interspecies Feshbach resonance, the losses due to three-body collisions were studied as a function of the interspecies scattering length. We observe an enhancement of the three-body collisions for three distinct values of the interspecies scattering lengths, both positive and negative, where no Feshbach resonances are expected. We attribute the two features at negative scattering length to the existence of two kinds of Efimov trimers, KKRb and KRbRb.

We investigate experimentally the entropy transfer between two distinguishable atomic quantum gases at ultralow temperatures. Exploiting a species-selective trapping potential, we are able to control the entropy of one target gas in presence of a second auxiliary gas. With this method, we drive the target gas into the degenerate regime in conditions of controlled temperature by transferring entropy to the auxiliary gas. We envision that our method could be useful both to achieve the low entropies required to realize new quantum phases and to measure the temperature of atoms in deep optical lattices. We verified the thermalization of the two species in a 1D lattice.