Abstract In view of recent experiments in ultracold atomic systems, the photoassociation of Efimov trimers, composed of three identical bosons, is studied utilizing the multipole expansion. We study both the normal hierarchy case, where one-body current is dominant, and the strong hierarchy case, relevant for photoassociation in ultracold atoms, where two-body current is dominant. For identical particles in the normal hierarchy case, the leading contribution comes from the r 2 s -mode operator and from the quadrupole d -mode operator. The s -mode reaction is found to be dominant at low temperature, while as the temperature increases the d -mode becomes as significant. For the strong hierarchy case, the leading contribution comes from a 2-body s -wave δ operator. In both cases log periodic oscillations are found in the cross section. For large but finite scattering length the amplitude of the oscillations becomes larger in comparison to infinite scattering length case. We apply our theory to photoassociation of 7 Li ultracold atoms and show a good fit to the available experimental results.
Abstract In view of recent experiments in ultracold atomic systems, the photoassociation of Efimov trimers, composed of three identical bosons, is studied utilizing the multipole expansion. We study both the normal hierarchy case, where one-body current is dominant, and the strong hierarchy case, relevant for photoassociation in ultracold atoms, where two-body current is dominant. For identical particles in the normal hierarchy case, the leading contribution comes from the r 2 s -mode operator and from the quadrupole d -mode operator. The s -mode reaction is found to be dominant at low temperature, while as the temperature increases the d -mode becomes as significant. For the strong hierarchy case, the leading contribution comes from a 2-body s -wave δ operator. In both cases log periodic oscillations are found in the cross section. For large but finite scattering length the amplitude of the oscillations becomes larger in comparison to infinite scattering length case. We apply our theory to photoassociation of 7 Li ultracold atoms and show a good fit to the available experimental results.
Considering one-body and two-body currents, we study the photoassociation and photodissociation of universal bosonic trimers. Analyzing the relative importance of these currents, we identify two physical scenarios: (i) normal hierarchy, where naive power counting holds and the one-body current dominates, and (ii) strong hierarchy, where the one-body current is suppressed. For both scenarios we observe that at the high-frequency tail, the response function exhibits log-periodic oscillations in transition to or from any continuum state regardless of the reaction partial-wave channel. In contrast, near-threshold log-periodic oscillations appear only in the leading s-wave components. These oscillations are the fingerprints of universal Efimov physics. We discuss the relevance of this effect to contemporary experiments in ultracold atoms.
Considering one-body and two-body currents, we study the photoassociation and photodissociation of universal bosonic trimers. Analyzing the relative importance of these currents we identify two physical scenarios (i) Normal hierarchy, where naive power counting holds and the one-body current dominates, and (ii) Strong hierarchy, where the one-body current is suppressed. For both scenarios we observe that at the high frequency tail, the response function exhibits log periodic oscillations in transition to or from any continuum state regardless of the reaction partial wave channel. In contrast, near threshold log periodic oscillations appear only in the leading s-wave components. These oscillations are the fingerprints of universal Efimov physics. We discuss the relevance of this effect to contemporary experiments in ultracold atoms.
In systems of ultracold atoms, the quantum Efimov effect can appear where identical bosons form an infinite tower of bound trimer states in the resonant limit, at the bound dimer dissociation threshold. The most characteristic feature of this effect is that their energy spectrum obey a geometric scaling law, which is universal in the sense that it emerges irrespective of the nature of the two body forces. Using a model potential, constructed to resemble the two body interaction between alkali atoms, which was fine tuned to control the scattering length, energy eigenvalues for the two- and threebody problem were calculated numerically. The results where fitted to the analytic theory and the appearance of the first Efimov state was positioned at a scattering length of -9.23rvdW , which is in good agreement with the universal value -9.2rvdW .
Few-body effects play an important role for the understanding of ultracold quantum gases. We make use of an effective field theory approach to investigate various aspects of universal few-body physics close to a Feshbach resonance. That is the regime where the scattering length is large compared to all other length scales of the system and thus determines the observables. It is also the regime where the Efimov effect whose main characteristic is the occurrence of a sequence of three-body bound states becomes important. At unitarity, i.e., for diverging scattering length, the ratio of binding energies of neighboring states approaches a constant. The existence of those trimers can be captured by a single three-body parameter and influences observables such as recombination rates. Starting from adequate Lagrangians, we derive atom-dimer scattering amplitudes that contain all information of interest about the three-particle systems. With this method, we first investigate the scattering of atoms and dimers at finite temperature in the presence of the Efimov effect. We calculate the dimer relaxation rate and obtain good agreement with available experimental data. Furthermore, heteronuclear mixtures exhibiting large interspecies scattering length are studied in detail. If bosons are the majority species, the Efimov effect occurs in an S-wave channel and we are able to compute three-body recombination and dimer relaxation rates. The results are compared to the outcome of two existing experiments. For mainly fermionic systems, the Efimov effect is only present in an overall P-wave and three-body recombination at threshold vanishes. However, in mixtures of atoms and dimers, scattering cross sections and dimer relaxation show the typical Efimov behavior of log-periodicity. We also consider two-dimensional Bose gases, where the Efimov effect does not occur. For those systems, we derive an equation including the first non-universal corrections and deduce three-body observables such as binding energies and atom-dimer scattering parameters.
The Efimov states are three-body bound states, which appear universally when the s-wave scattering length between the particles is resonantly large.Since the Efimov states and their characteristic discrete scale invariance have recently been observed in ultracold atoms, the Efimov states and their associated few-body phenomena have attracted widening interest both theoretically and experimentally.In this thesis, I theoretically study the Efimov physics and related phenomena, focusing on the following three topics: (i) Universal three-body physics for a mass-imbalanced Fermi system (Chapter 3).For a system of two identical spinless (i.e., spin-polarized) fermions and one distinguishable particle which interact via a short-range potential with a large s-wave scattering length, two classes of universal three-body bound states have been known to appear in different regimes of the mass ratio: the Efimov trimers and the Kartavtsev-Malykh trimers, which feature the discrete and continuous scale invariance, respectively.I have found the third class of universal three-body bound states, which I call the "crossover trimers".The crossover trimers show neither the discrete nor continuous scale invariance.I have identified the regions of these three classes of trimers as a function of the mass ratio and the s-wave scattering length, and shown that the Kartavtsev-Malykh trimers and the Efimov trimers can continuously transform into each other via the crossover trimers as the mass ratio and the s-wave scattering length are varied.Owing to the presence of the crossover trimers, the Kartavtsev-Malykh trimers dissociate into a particle and a dimer when the s-wave scattering length is varied, inducing resonances in the particle-dimer scattering.I have calculated the elastic particle-dimer scattering lengths in arbitrary angular-momentum channels, and shown that the particle-dimer resonances indeed occur.From the resonance positions, I have found accurate values of the critical mass ratios at which the Kartavtsev-Malykh trimers in the higher angular-momentum channels appear. (ii) Universal three-body parameter (Chapter 4).In the Efimov physics, the three-body parameter fixes the short-range three-body phase and hence the scale of the energy spectrum.Until quite recently, it has been widely held that the threebody parameter should depend on the short-range part of the inter-atomic potential, and hence vary almost randomly between different atomic species and hyperfine states.However, mounting evidence in recent experiments suggests otherwise.While some theoretical studies have succeeded in reproducing the universal behavior in the three-body parameter, the underlying physical mechanism has remained unclear and controversial.In this thesis, I elucidate the physical origin of the universal three-body parameter.I propose that a non-adiabatic deformation of the three-body wave function induced by a universal two-body correlation results in a universal three-body repulsion, which prevents three particles from coming close and renders the three-body parameter universal.This mechanism is verified by reproducing the universal three-body repulsion with a simple model wave function.The mechanism found here suggests that the three-body parameter would also be universal for non-van der Waals types of potentials.For various classes of deep two-body potentials, it is shown that the effective range is the relevant length scale to characterize the two-body correlation and sets the three-body parameter.Depending on the shape of the two-body correlation, there
Small weakly bound droplets determine a number of properties of ultracold Bose and Fermi gases. For example, Efimov trimers near the atom-atom-atom and atom-dimer thresholds lead to enhanced losses from bosonic clouds. Generalizations to four- and higher-body systems have also been considered. Moreover, Efimov trimers have been predicted to play a role in the Bose polaron with large boson-impurity scattering length. Motivated by these considerations, the present work provides a detailed theoretical analysis of weakly bound N-body clusters consisting of $N\ensuremath{-}1$ identical bosons (denoted by ``B'') of mass m that interact with a single distinguishable impurity particle (denoted by ``X'') of mass M. The system properties are analyzed as a function of the mass ratio $\ensuremath{\kappa}$ (values from $\ensuremath{\kappa}=1$ to 50 are considered), where $\ensuremath{\kappa}$ is equal to m/M, and the two-body s-wave scattering length aBX between the bosons and the impurity. To reach the universal Efimov regime in which the size of the BBX trimer as well as those of larger clusters is much larger than the length scales of the underlying interaction model, three different approaches are considered: resonance states are determined in the absence of BB and BBX interactions, bound states are determined in the presence of repulsive three-body boson-boson-impurity interactions, and bound states are determined in the presence of repulsive two-body boson-boson interactions. The universal regime, in which the details of the underlying interaction model become irrelevant, is identified.