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arXiv:1106.4672 · Journal of Physics B Atomic Molecular and Optical Physics

Landau quantization effects in ultracold atom–ion collisions

Andrea Simoni, Jean–Michel Launay

Published Nov 18, 2011• 9 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We study ultracold atom–ion collisions in the presence of an external magnetic field. At low collision energy the field can drastically modify the translational motion of the ion, which follows quantized cyclotron orbits. We present a rigorous theoretical approach for the calculation of quantum scattering amplitudes in these conditions. Collisions in different magnetic field regimes, identified by the size of the cyclotron radius with respect to the range of the interaction potential, are investigated. Our results are important in cases where use of a magnetic field to control the atom–ion collision dynamics is envisioned.

DOI
10.1088/0953-4075/44/23/235201

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We study ultracold atom–ion collisions in the presence of an external magnetic field. At low collision energy the field can drastically modify the translational motion of the ion, which follows quantized cyclotron orbits. We present a rigorous theoretical approach for the calculation of quantum scattering amplitudes in these conditions. Collisions in different magnetic field regimes, identified by the size of the cyclotron radius with respect to the range of the interaction potential, are investigated. Our results are important in cases where use of a magnetic field to control the atom–ion collision dynamics is envisioned.
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We study atom-ion scattering in the ultracold regime. To this aim, an analytical model based on the multichannel quantum-defect formalism is developed and compared to close-coupled numerical calculations. We investigate the occurrence of magnetic Feshbach resonances, focusing on the specific 40Ca++Na^{40}\mathrm{Ca}^{+}+\mathrm{Na}40Ca++Na system. The presence of several resonances at experimentally accessible magnetic fields should allow the atom-ion interaction to be precisely tuned. A fully quantum-mechanical study of charge-exchange processes shows that charge-exchange rates should remain small even in the presence of resonance effects. Most of our results can be cast in a system-independent form and are important for the realization of charge-neutral ultracold systems.
We study theoretically quantum dynamics of interacting bosons in artificial magnetic fields as engineered in recent ultracold atomic experiments, where quantum cyclotron orbital motion has been observed. With exact numerical simulations and perturbative analyses, we find that interactions induce damping in the cyclotron motion. The damping time is found to be dependent on interaction and tunneling strengths monotonically, while its dependence on magnetic flux is nonmonotonic. Sufficiently strong interactions would render bosons dynamically localized, inhibiting the cyclotron motion. The damping predicted by us can be construed as an interaction-induced quantum decoherence of the cyclotron motion.
There is great interest within the physics and chemistry communities in the properties of ultracold molecules. Electromagnetic fields can be used to create, trap, and modify the collisional dynamics of ultracold molecules, and thus the properties of ultracold molecules in electromagnetic fields is of growing importance. This thesis examines some of the effects of externally applied electromagnetic fields on ultracold molecules. Initially, magnetic Feshbach resonances in combined electric and magnetic fields are examined in the collisions of He(1S )+SO(3Σ−). Through detailed quantum scattering calculations, it is then shown that the sympathetic cooling of NH(3Σ−) molecules with Mg atoms has a good prospect of success, a first for a neutral molecular system. Detailed quantum scattering calculations are performed for a wide range of collision energies and magnetic field strengths and it is found that the ratio of elastic to inelastic collisions is large for temperatures below 10 mK, and increases as the collision energy and magnetic field strength decrease. The near threshold collision properties of Mg+NH have been examined using a multichannel quantum defect theory approach. A new type of conical intersection, that is a function of applied electromagnetic fields only, is also demonstrated. For states of opposite parity, brought into degeneracy with a magnetic field, the degeneracy can be resolved by the addition of an electric field, forming a conical intersection. A suitable arrangement of fields could thus be used to create a conical intersection in laboratory coordinates within an ultracold trapped gas. For a BoseEinstein condensate, in the mean-field approximation, the resultant geometric phase effect induces stable states of persistent superfluid flow that are characterized by half-integer quantized angular momentum.