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arXiv:1509.05585 · Physical Review A

Universal three-body recombination and Efimov resonances in an ultracold Li-Cs mixture

Juris Ulmanis, S. Häfner, R. Pires, Félix Werner, Dmitry S. Petrov, E. D. Kuhnle, Matthias Weidemüller

Published Feb 16, 2016• 36 citations
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Abstract

We study Efimov resonances via three-body loss in an ultracold two-component gas of fermionic $^{6}\mathrm{Li}$ and bosonic $^{133}\mathrm{Cs}$ atoms close to a Feshbach resonance at 843 G, extending results reported previously [Pires et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 112, 250404 (2014)] to temperatures around 120 nK. The experimental scheme for reaching lower temperatures is based upon compensating the gravity-induced spatial separation of the mass-imbalanced gases with bichromatic optical dipole traps. We observe the first and second excited Li-Cs-Cs Efimov resonance in the magnetic field dependence of the three-body event rate constant, in good agreement with the universal zero-range theory at finite temperature [Petrov and Werner, Phys. Rev. A 92, 022704 (2015)]. Deviations are found for the Efimov ground state, and the inelasticity parameter $\ensuremath{\eta}$ is found to be significantly larger than those for single-species systems.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.93.022707

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We observe two consecutive heteronuclear Efimov resonances in an ultracold Li-Cs mixture by measuring three-body loss coefficients as a function of magnetic field near a Feshbach resonance. The first resonance is detected at a scattering length of a_((0))=-320(10)a_((0)), corresponding to ∼7(∼3) times the Li-Cs (Cs-Cs) van der Waals range. The second resonance appears at 5.8(1.0)a_((0)), close to the unitarity-limited regime at the sample temperature of 450 nK. Indication of a third resonance is found in the atom loss spectra. The scaling of the resonance positions is close to the predicted universal scaling value of 4.9 for zero temperature. Deviations from universality might be caused by finite-range and temperature effects, as well as magnetic field-dependent Cs-Cs interactions.
This thesis investigates universal and non-universal aspects of few-body physics in a mass-imbalanced mixture of ultracold bosonic 133^{133}133Cs and fermionic 6^66Li atoms. For this purpose an experimental apparatus for the creation of quantum degenerate gases has been constructed. Using radio-frequency association of weakly-bound LiCs molecules and additional atom-loss spectroscopy we determine the two-body interaction properties between Li and Cs atoms at low collision energies. The analysis with a coupled-channels calculation yields precise singlet and triplet electronic ground state molecular potential curves, from which scattering lengths and positions of Fano-Feshbach resonances are extracted. These results represent almost a tenfold improvement over the previous determination, and are used to study few-body recombination processes and, for the first time, their dependence on the interaction strength between the heavy atoms close to two broad scattering resonances at various temperatures. Measurements of three-body loss rates reveal two series of three and two consecutive LiCs2_22​ Efimov resonances that demonstrate the universal scaling factor 4.9 between the first and second excited state resonances. The ground state resonance deviates from the discrete scaling law. By the use of hyperspherical formalism with either pairwise zero-range or Lennard-Jones model potentials we identify the van der Waals interaction between Cs atoms as a significant source of these modifications.
Within the universal zero-range theory, we compute the three-body recombination rate to deep molecular states for two identical bosons resonantly interacting with each other and with a third atom of another species, in the absence of weakly bound dimers. The results allow for a quantitative understanding of loss resonances at finite temperature and, combined with experimental data, can be used for testing the Efimov universality and extracting the corresponding three-body parameters in a given system. Curiously, we find that the loss rate can be dramatically enhanced by the resonant heavy-heavy interaction, even for high mass ratios where this interaction is practically irrelevant for the Efimov scaling factor. This effect is important for analyzing the recent loss measurements in the Cs-Li mixture.
We investigate theoretically and experimentally the heteronuclear Efimov scenario for a three-body system that consists of two bosons and one distinguishable particle with positive intraspecies scattering lengths. The three-body parameter at the three-body scattering threshold and the scaling factor between consecutive Efimov resonances are found to be controlled by the scattering length between the two bosons, approximately independent of short-range physics. We observe two excited-state Efimov resonances in the three-body recombination spectra of an ultracold mixture of fermionic ^{6}Li and bosonic ^{133}Cs atoms close to a Li-Cs Feshbach resonance, where the Cs-Cs interaction is positive. Deviation of the obtained scaling factor of 4.0(3) from the universal prediction of 4.9 and the absence of the ground state Efimov resonance shed new light on the interpretation of the universality and the discrete scaling behavior of heteronuclear Efimov physics.
We experimentally and theoretically study the effect of the intraspecies scattering length onto the heteronuclear Efimov scenario, following up on our earlier observation of Efimov resonances in an ultracold Cs-Li mixture for negative [Pires et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 112, 250404 (2014)] and positive Cs-Cs scattering length [Ulmanis et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 117, 153201 (2016)]. Three theoretical models of increasing complexity are employed to quantify its influence on the scaling factor and the three-body parameter: a simple Born-Oppenheimer picture, a zero-range theory, and a spinless van der Waals model. These models are compared to Efimov resonances observed in an ultracold mixture of bosonic 133Cs^{133}\mathrm{Cs}133Cs and fermionic 6Li^{6}\mathrm{Li}6Li atoms close to two Cs-Li Feshbach resonances located at 843 G and 889 G, characterized by different sign and magnitude of the Cs-Cs interaction. By changing the sign and magnitude of the intraspecies scattering length different scaling behaviors of the three-body loss rate are identified, in qualitative agreement with theoretical predictions. The three-body loss rate is strongly influenced by the intraspecies scattering length.
We derive an analytic formula which describes the final bound state dependence in ultracold three-body recombination. Using an energy-dependent loss parameter, the recently observed broad resonance in an ultracold gas of 6Li^{6}\mathrm{Li}6Li atoms [T. B. Ottenstein, T. Lompe, M. Kohnen, A. N. Wenz, and S. Jochim, Phys. Rev. Lett. 101, 203202 (2008); J. H. Huckans, J. R. Williams, E. L. Hazlett, R. W. Stites, and K. M. O'Hara, Phys. Rev. Lett. 102, 165302 (2009)] is described quantitatively. We also provide an analytic and approximation for the three-body recombination rate which encapsulates the underlying physics of the universal three-body recombination process.