  We investigate the temporal fluctuations characteristic of the formation of
molecular dimers from ultracold fermionic atoms via Raman photoassociation. The
quantum fluctuations inherent to the initial atomic state result in large
fluctuations in the passage time from atoms to molecules. Assuming degeneracy
of kinetic energies of atoms in the strong coupling limit we find that a
heuristic classical stochastic model yields qualitative agreement with the full
quantum treatment in the initial stages of the dynamics. We also show that in
contrast to the association of atoms into dimers, the reverse process of
dissociation from a condensate of bosonic dimers exhibits little passage time
fluctuations. Finally we explore effects due to the non-degeneracy of atomic
kinetic energies.
