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arXiv:0711.3238 · Physical Review Letters

Suppression of Molecular Decay in Ultracold Gases without Fermi Statistics

José Paulo D'Incao, Brett D. Esry

Published Apr 25, 2008• 27 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We study inelastic processes for ultracold three-body systems in which only one interaction is resonant. We show that at ultracold temperatures three-body recombination in such systems leads mainly to the formation of weakly bound molecules. In addition, and perhaps more importantly, we have found that the decay rates for weakly bound molecules due to collisions with other atoms can be suppressed not only without fermionic statistics but also when bosonic statistics applies. These results indicate that recombination in three-component atomic gases can be used as an efficient mechanism for molecular formation, allowing the achievement of high molecular densities.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.100.163201

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We study inelastic processes for ultracold three-body systems in which only one interaction is resonant. We show that at ultracold temperatures three-body recombination in such systems leads mainly to the formation of weakly bound molecules. In addition, and perhaps more importantly, we have found that the decay rates for weakly bound molecules due to collisions with other atoms can be suppressed not only without fermionic statistics but also when bosonic statistics applies. These results indicate that recombination in three-component atomic gases can be used as an efficient mechanism for molecular formation, allowing the achievement of high molecular densities.
We consider weakly bound bosonic and fermionic heteronuclear molecules (dimers) in ultracold atomic gases, where the interspecies interaction is characterized by a large positive scattering length. We develop a new theoretical approach to solve the four-body scattering problem, which is valid when the mass ratio between the constituent atoms is sufficiently large. This approach is then used to study elastic and inelastic dimer- dimer scattering processes in the case that the light constituent atoms are fermions, while the heavy atoms can be either fermions or bosons. Due to the Fermi statistics of the light atoms, the heavy atoms experience a strong repulsion at large intermolecular distances. This leads to suppression of the collisional relaxation to universal trimer (Efimov) states and/or deeply bound molecular states. We present the formation rate of Efimov trimers as a function of the three-body parameter for several experimentally interesting systems. The competition between the formation of trimers and relaxation to deeply bound molecules is analyzed, and prospects for future studies of these systems are discussed.
Ultracold gases of three distinguishable particles with large scattering lengths are expected to show rich few-body physics related to the Efimov effect. We have created three different mixtures of ultracold 6Li atoms and weakly bound 6Li2 dimers consisting of atoms in three different hyperfine states and studied their inelastic decay via atom-dimer collisions. We have found resonant enhancement of the decay due to the crossing of Efimov-like trimer states with the atom-dimer continuum in one mixture as well as minima of the decay in another mixture, which we interpret as a suppression of exchange reactions of the type |12+|3→|23+|1. Such a suppression is caused by interference between different decay paths and demonstrates the possibility of using Efimov physics to control the rate constants for molecular exchange reactions in the ultracold regime.
The use of Feshbach resonances for tuning the interparticle interaction in ultracold Fermi gases has led to remarkable developments, in particular to the creation and Bose-Einstein condensation of weakly bound diatomic molecules of fermionic atoms.These are the largest diatomic molecules obtained so far, with a size of the order of thousands of angstroms.They represent novel composite bosons, which exhibit features of Fermi statistics at short intermolecular distances.Being highly excited, these molecules are remarkably stable with respect to collisional relaxation, which is a consequence of the Pauli exclusion principle for identical fermionic atoms.The purpose of this review is to introduce theoretical approaches and describe the physics of molecular regimes in two-component Fermi gases and Fermi-Fermi mixtures, focusing attention on quantum statistical effects.
The use of Feshbach resonances for tuning the interparticle interaction in ultracold Fermi gases has led to remarkable developments, in particular to the creation and Bose-Einstein condensation of weakly bound diatomic molecules of fermionic atoms. These are the largest diatomic molecules obtained so far, with a size of the order of thousands of angstroms. They represent novel composite bosons, which exhibit features of Fermi statistics at short intermolecular distances. Being highly excited, these molecules are remarkably stable with respect to collisional relaxation, which is a consequence of the Pauli exclusion principle for identical fermionic atoms. The purpose of this review is to introduce theoretical approaches and describe the physics of molecular regimes in two-component Fermi gases and Fermi-Fermi mixtures, focusing attention on quantum statistical effects.
We study ultracold three-body collisions of bosons and fermions when the interatomic interaction is tuned near a narrow Feshbach resonance. We show that the width of the resonance has a substantial impact on the collisional properties of ultracold gases in the strongly interacting regime. From our numerical and analytical analyses, we identify universal features dependent on the resonance width. Remarkably, we find that all inelastic processes near narrow resonances leading to deeply bound states in bosonic systems are suppressed, while those for fermionic systems are enhanced. As a result, narrow resonances present a scenario that is the reverse of that found for broad resonances, opening up the possibility of creating stable samples of ultracold bosonic gases with large scattering lengths.
Three-body recombination can play an important role in experiments on ultracold atomic gases because it can produce significant atom loss. Such losses have been seen in Bose-Einstein condensates, but have been thought to play little role for degenerate Fermi gases. We show that under some circumstances, three-body recombination can be just as large in fermi systems as in bose systems. In particular, when there is a two-body resonance near threshold — as is often the case experimentally — the threshold suppression due to the Pauli principle no longer applies. 1