Universal dimer in a collisionally opaque medium: experimental observables and Efimov resonances

A universal dimer is subject to secondary collisions with atoms when formed in a cloud of ultracold atoms via three-body recombination. We show that in a collisionally opaque medium, the value of the scattering length that results in the maximum number of secondary collisions may not correspond to the Efimov resonance at the atom-dimer threshold and thus cannot be automatically associated with it. This result explains a number of controversies in recent experimental results on universal three-body states and supports the emerging evidence for the significant finite range corrections to the first excited Efimov energy level.     

Three-Body System with Two-Channel Zero-Range Interaction Model of Feshbach Resonance

We perform three-body calculations of trimers and atom-dimer scattering near a Feshbach resonance using two interaction models. The first model is a one-channel zero-range model, where the scattering length follows the phenomenological dependence on the external magnetic field. The second is a two-channel model capable to describe the Feshbach resonance. The scattering length dependence on magnetic detuning is recovered. We compare the predictions of these two models, and show that near a Feshbach resonance important differences are expected.     

Effective Field Theory Analysis of Three-Boson Systems at Next-To-Next-To-Leading Order

We use an effective field theory for short-range forces (SREFT) to analyze systems of three identical bosons interacting via a two-body potential that generates a scattering length, a, which is large compared to the range of the interaction, ?. The amplitude for the scattering of one boson off a bound state of the other two is computed to next-to-next-to-leading order (N²LO) in the ?/a expansion. At this order, two pieces of three-body data are required as input in order to renormalize the amplitude (for fixed a). We apply our results to a model system of three Helium-4 atoms, which are assumed to interact via the TTY potential. We generate N²LO predictions for atom-dimer scattering below the dimer breakup threshold using the bound-state energy of the shallow Helium-4 trimer and the atom-dimer scattering length as our two pieces of three-body input. Based on the convergence pattern of the SREFT expansion, as well as differences in the predictions of two renormalization schemes, we conclude that our N²LO phase- shift predictions will receive higher-order corrections of < 0.2 %. In contrast, the prediction of SREFT for the binding energy of the “deep” trimer of Helium-4 atoms displays poor convergence.     

Three-boson problem near a narrow Feshbach resonance

We consider a three-boson system with resonant binary interactions and show that for sufficiently narrow resonances three-body observables depend only on the resonance width and the scattering length. The effect of narrow resonances is qualitatively different from that of wide resonances revealing novel physics of three-body collisions. We calculate the rate of three-body recombination to a weakly bound level and the atom-dimer scattering length and discuss implications for experiments on Bose-Einstein condensates and atom-molecule mixtures near Feshbach resonances.     

Atom-dimer and dimer-dimer scattering in fermionic mixtures near a narrow Feshbach resonance

We develop a diagrammatic approach for solving few-body problems in heteronuclear fermionic mixtures near a narrow interspecies Feshbach resonance. We calculate s-, p-, and d-wave phaseshifts for the scattering of an atom by a weakly-bound dimer. The fermionic statistics of atoms and the composite nature of the dimer lead to a strong angular momentum dependence of the atom-dimer interaction, which manifests itself in a peculiar interference of the scattered s- and p-waves. This effect strengthens with the mass ratio and is remarkably pronounced in ⁴⁰K-(⁴⁰K-⁶Li) atom-dimer collisions. We calculate the scattering length for two dimers formed near a narrow interspecies resonance. Finally, we discuss the collisional relaxation of the dimers to deeply bound states and evaluate the corresponding rate constant as a function of the detuning and collision energy.     

Approaching universality in weakly bound three-body systems

Atom-dimer scattering below the three-body breakup threshold is studied for a system of three identical bosons. The atom-dimer scattering length and the energy of the most weakly bound three-body state are shown to be strongly correlated. An appropriate rescaling of the observables reveals the subtlety of the correlation and serves to identify universal trends in the unitary limit of divergent two-body scattering length. The correlation provides a new quantitative measure of the degree of universality in three-body systems with short-ranged interactions, as well as a consistency check of effective field theories and other theoretical models.     

Realization of a resonant Fermi gas with a large effective range

We have measured the interaction energy and three-body recombination rate for a two-component Fermi gas near a narrow Feshbach resonance and found both to be strongly energy dependent. Even for de Broglie wavelengths greatly exceeding the van der Waals length scale, the behavior of the interaction energy as a function of temperature cannot be described by atoms interacting via a contact potential. Rather, energy-dependent corrections beyond the scattering length approximation are required, indicating a resonance with an anomalously large effective range. For fields where the molecular state is above threshold, the rate of three-body recombination is enhanced by a sharp, two-body resonance arising from the closed-channel molecular state which can be magnetically tuned through the continuum. This narrow resonance can be used to study strongly correlated Fermi gases that simultaneously have a sizable effective range and a large scattering length.     

Three-body recombination in bose gases with large scattering length

An effective field theory for the three-body system with large scattering length is applied to three-body recombination to a weakly bound s-wave state in a Bose gas. Our model independent analysis demonstrates that the three-body recombination constant alpha is not universal, but can take any value between zero and 67.9Planck's over 2pia(4)/m, where a is the scattering length. Other low-energy three-body observables can be predicted in terms of a and alpha. Near a Feshbach resonance, alpha should oscillate between those limits as the magnetic field B approaches the point where a-->infinity. In any interval of B over which a increases by a factor of 22.7, alpha should have a zero.     

Three-Body Recombination Rates Near a Feshbach Resonance within a Two-Channel Contact Interaction Model

We calculate the three-body recombination rate into a shallow dimer in a gas of cold bosonic atoms near a Feshbach resonance using a two-channel contact interaction model. The two-channel model naturally describes the variation of the scattering length through the Feshbach resonance and has a finite effective range. We confront the theory with the available experimental data and show that the two-channel model is able to quantitatively describe the existing data. The finite effective range leads to a reduction of the scaling factor between the recombination minima from the universal value of 22.7. The reduction is larger for larger effective ranges or, correspondingly, for narrower Feshbach resonances.     

Borromean three-body heteroatomic resonances

We present an approach to analyze recent experimental evidences of Efimov resonant states in mixtures of ultracold gases, by considering two-species three-body atomic systems bound in a Borromean configuration, where all the two-body interactions are unbound. For such Borromean three-body systems, it is shown that a continuum three-body s-wave resonance emerges from an Efimov state as a scattering length or a three-body scale is moved. The energy and width of the resonant state are determined from a scaling function with arguments given by dimension-less energy ratios relating the two-body virtual state subsystem energies with the shallowest three-body bound state. The peculiar behavior of such resonances is that their peaks are expected to move to lower values of the scattering length, with increasing width, as one raises the temperature. For Borromean systems, two resonant peaks are expected in ultralow-temperature regimes, which will disappear at higher energies. It is shown how a Borromean-Efimov excited bound state turns out to a resonant state by tuning the virtual two-body subsystem energies or scattering lengths, with all energies written in units of the next deeper shallowest Efimov state energy. The resonance position and width for the decay into the continuum are obtained as universal scaling functions (limit cycle) of the dimensionless ratios of the two and three-body scales, which are calculated numerically within a zero-range renormalized three-body model.     

Three-Body Recombination with Two-Channel Contact Interactions

We use a two-channel contact interaction model to describe a system of three identical bosons. The two-channel model quantitatively describes the phenomena of Feshbach resonance in agreement with the phenomenological expression relating scattering length to magnetic detuning. The model also has a finite effective range. We investigate finite range effects in three-body recombination. The simpler one-channel contact interaction model predicts a characteristic geometric scaling of minima in the recombination coefficient as a function of scattering length with scaling parameter 22.7. We show that this factor is reduced when the effective range is included. We compare calculations to experiment.     

The Three-Boson System at Next-to-Next-to-Leading Order

We discuss effective field-theory treatments of the problem of three particles interacting via short-range forces (range R ≪ a ₂, with a ₂ the two-body scattering length). We show that forming a once-subtracted scattering equation yields a scattering amplitude whose low-momentum part is renormalization-group invariant up to corrections of O(R ³/a ₂ ³). Since corrections of O(R/a ₂) and O(R ²/a ₂ ²) can be straightforwardly included in the integral equation’s kernel, a unique solution for 1 + 2 scattering phase shifts and three-body bound-state energies can be obtained up to this accuracy. We use our equation to calculate the correlation between the binding energies of Helium-4 trimers and the atom-dimer scattering length. Our results are in excellent agreement with recent three-dimensional Faddeev calculations that used phenomenological inter-atomic potentials.     

Path of Momentum Integral in the Skorniakov-Ter-Martirosian Equation

The Skorniakov-Ter-Martirosian (STM) integral equation is widely used for the quantum three-body problems of low-energy particles (e.g., ultracold atom gases). With this equation these three-body problems can be efficiently solved in the momentum space. In this approach the boundary condition for the case that all the three particles are gathered together is described by the upper limit of the momentum integral, i.e., the momentum cutoff. On the other hand, in realistic systems, the three-body recombination (TBR) process can occur when all these three particles are close to each other. In this process two particles form a deep dimer and the other particle can gain high kinetic energy and then escape from the low-energy system. In the presence of the TBR process, the momentum-cutoff in the STM equation would include a non-zero imaginary part. As a result, the momentum integral in the STM equation should be done in the complex-momentum plane. In this case the result of the integral depends on the choice of the integral path. Obviously, only one integral path can lead to the correct result. In this paper we consider how to correctly choose the integral path for the STM equation. We take the atom-dimer scattering problem in a specific ultracold atom gas as an example, and show the results given by different integral paths. Based on the result for this case we explore the reasonable integral paths for general case.     

The three-boson system with short-range interactions

We discuss renormalization of the non-relativistic three-body problem with short-range forces. The problem is non-perturbative at momenta of the order of the inverse of the two-body scattering length. An infinite number of graphs must be summed, which leads to a cutoff dependence that does not appear in any order in perturbation theory. We argue that this cutoff dependence can be absorbed in one local three-body force counterterm and compute the running of the three-body force with the cutoff. This allows a calculation of the scattering of a particle and the two-particle bound state if the corresponding scattering length is used as input. We also obtain a model-independent relation between binding energy of a shallow three-body bound state and this scattering length. We comment on the power counting that organizes higher-order corrections and on relevance of this result for the effective field theory program in nuclear and molecular physics.     

Dilute Fermi gas in quasi-one-dimensional traps: from weakly interacting fermions via hard core bosons to a weakly interacting Bose gas

We study equilibrium properties of a cold two-component Fermi gas confined in a quasi-one-dimensional trap of the transverse size l(perpendicular). In the dilute limit (nl(perpendicular)<1, where n is the 1D density) the problem is exactly solvable for an arbitrary 3D fermionic scattering length aF. When l(perpendicular)/aF goes from -infinity to +infinity, the system successively passes three regimes: weakly interacting Fermi gas, hard core Bose gas, and weakly coupled Bose gas. The regimes are separated by two crossovers at aF approximately +/-nl2(perpendicular). In conclusion, we discuss experimental implications of these results.     

Sensitivity of the dynamics of Na + Na$\mathsf{_2}$ collisions on the three-body interaction at ultralow energies

We have studied the quantum dynamics of collisions between spin-stretched Na atoms and Na₂ molecules. Cross-sections and rate coefficients for vibrational relaxation of Na₂(v,j = 0) have been computed in the 1 nK-0.1 mK energy range using an accurate time-independent method based on hyperspherical coordinates. The complex scattering length and the extension of the Wigner region have been determined. A detailed study of the sensitivity of collisional quantities on the three-body interaction at short distance has been performed. They are very sensitive to three-body effects for the vibrational state v = 1 of Na₂. Rotational distributions have also been calculated and show a more pronounced sensitivity on the three-body interaction, even for v = 2 and 3.Received: 29 March 2004, Published online: 22 June 2004PACS: 34.50.-s Scattering of atoms and molecules     

Low-Energy Proton-Deuteron Scattering with a Coulomb-Modified Faddeev Equation

A modified version of the Faddeev three-body equation to accommodate the Coulomb interaction, which was used in the study of three-nucleon bound states, is applied to the proton-deuteron scattering problem at energies below the three-body breakup threshold. A formal derivation of the equation in a time-independent scattering theory is given. Numerical results for phase-shift parameters are presented to be compared with those of other methods and results of the phase-shift analysis. Differential cross sections and nucleon analyzing powers are calculated with the effects of three-nucleon forces, and these results are compared with recent experimental data. The difference between the nucleon analyzing power in proton-deuteron scattering and that in neutron-deuteron scattering is discussed.Received March 14, 2002; accepted September 29, 2002 Published online June 27, 2003     

The Universality of the Efimov Three-body Parameter

In this paper we discuss the recent discovery of the universality of the three-body parameter (3BP) from Efimov physics. This new result was identified by recent experimental observations in ultracold quantum gases where the value of the s-wave scattering length, a = a _?, at which the first Efimov resonance is created was found to be nearly the same for a range of atomic species — if scaled as a _?/r _vdW, where r _vdW is the van der Waals length. Here, we discuss some of the physical principles related to these observations that emerge from solving the three-body problem with van der Waals interactions in the hyperspherical formalism. We also demonstrate the strong three-body multichannel nature of the problem and the importance of properly accounting for nonadiabatic effects.     

Investigation of the reaction 2H(n,np) at θn = 0°

The differential cross section of the ²H(n, np) reaction was measured at θ_n = 0°. Because of the applied special geometry the experimental data extend over a large fraction of the phase space, including several final state interaction regions as well as regions far from the dominance of quasi-two-body processes. The experiment was analysed with an exact three-body calculation using s-wave separable potentials (CEE). The analysis of the n-n and n-p final state interaction peaks gave a_nn = ?16.3 ± 1.6 fm for the n-n ¹S₀ scattering length and r_nn = 3.15 ± 0.7 fm for the effective range. Remarkable deviations from the calculated cross sections-were found in regions where no strong final state interaction was present.     

Universal three-body physics for fermionic dipoles

Our present study of the universal physics for three oriented fermionic dipoles in the hyperspherical adiabatic representation predicts a single long-lived three-dipole state, which exists in only one three-body symmetry and forms near a two-dipole resonance. Our analysis reveals the spatial configuration of the universal state and the scaling of its binding energy and lifetime with the strength of the dipolar interaction. In addition, three-body recombination of fermionic dipoles is found to be important even at ultracold energies. An additional finding is that an effective long-range repulsion arises between a dipole and a dipolar dimer that is tunable via dipolar interactions.