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The Journal of Chemical Physics

Efimov states for three 4He atoms?

Th. Cornelius, W. Glöckle

Published Oct 1, 1986• 100 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The system of three 4He atoms interacting through the intermolecular potential HFDHE2 is solved exactly within the Faddeev scheme. We find that the trimer has two bound states at E=−0.11 K and E=−0.16(−2) K, where the excited state shows the property of an Efimov state. It is overrun by the two-body fragmentation threshold for an artificially enhanced overall interaction strength. Uncertainties in the potential parameters, possibly combined with solvent effects, may allow a slightly weaker force, which supports a second Efimov state. In any case dynamical effects of the Efimov states will be the same whether it lies close to E=0 on the physical or unphysical sheet.

DOI
10.1063/1.450912

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The system of three 4He atoms interacting through the intermolecular potential HFDHE2 is solved exactly within the Faddeev scheme. We find that the trimer has two bound states at E=−0.11 K and E=−0.16(−2) K, where the excited state shows the property of an Efimov state. It is overrun by the two-body fragmentation threshold for an artificially enhanced overall interaction strength. Uncertainties in the potential parameters, possibly combined with solvent effects, may allow a slightly weaker force, which supports a second Efimov state. In any case dynamical effects of the Efimov states will be the same whether it lies close to E=0 on the physical or unphysical sheet.
Using the HFDHE2 He-He potential of Aziz et al. [J. Chem. Phys. 90, 4330 (1979)] with the Faddeev-Yakubovsky theory, we have calculated the 4He^{4}\mathrm{He}4He atom-triatom scattering length and found it to be - 116 \AA{}. We reduced the sss-wave two-body ttt matrix to a separable form through the unitary-pole approximation and did the same for the sss-wave [3+1] and [2+2] subamplitudes with the energy-dependent-pole approximation in our work. Also, the binding energies of all the states in the trimer and tetramer, and the atom-diatom scattering length, already determined in our previous work with other potentials, were recalculated for the new interaction. We found an excited trimer bound state, apparently not an Efimov state, near the atom-diatom threshold and an atom-diatom scattering length of 195 \AA{}. A feature of our results was the absence of an excited state in the tetramer, but in its place, was a resonancelike state which led to the large atom-triatom scattering length.
Exact solutions for the low-temperature helium dimer and trimer, 4He2^{4}\mathrm{He}_{2}4He2​ and 4He3^{4}\mathrm{He}_{3}4He3​, are derived, based on our $\ensuremath{\delta}$ function model for the interatomic potential. For the trimer, the Faddeev equations are shown to be separable in hyperspherical coordinates, with the SSS-wave alone giving an exact solution. The parameters ${\ensuremath{\lambda}}_{0}$ and r0{r}_{0}r0​ are fitted to accurate computations on the dimer and trimer. Excited states of the trimer are shown to exhibit the Efimov effect, whereby artificially reducing the strength of the two-body potential causes an infinite number of weakly-bound levels to condense out of the continuum. All the features anticipated by Efimov are quantitatively reproduced within our model. Since short-range details of the intermolecular forces are not relevant, our results can be considered to be universally applicable.
A comparison is made between the number of Efimov States present in 4He^{4}\mathrm{He}4He trimers as calculated using the Faddeev equations in the Faddeev coordinate-momentum approach with estimates predicted by N=(1/\ensuremath{\pi})ln(\ensuremath{\Vert}a\ensuremath{\Vert}/r0{r}_{0}r0​) using realistic phenomenological He-He potentials. It is found that there is good agreement for systems supporting few states and that agreement remains when the Efimov states are forced to disappear by mathematically altering the potentials.
We consider a system of three 4{}^{4}4He atoms, which is so far the simplest realistic three-body system exhibiting the Efimov effect, in order to analyze deviations from the universal Efimov three-body spectrum. We first calculate the bound states using a realistic two-body potential, and then analyze how they can be reproduced by simple effective models beyond Efimov's universal theory. We find that the nonuniversal variations of the ground and first excited states can be well reproduced by models parametrized with only three quantities: the scattering length and effective range of the original potential, and a small three-body force. Furthermore, the three-body parameter, which fixes the origin of the infinite set of three-body levels, is found to be consistent with recent experimental observations in other atomic species.
The Faddeev equations for the atomic helium-trimer systems are solved numerically with high accuracy both for the most sophisticated realistic potentials available and for simple phenomenological potentials. An efficient numerical procedure is described. The large-distance asymptotic behaviour, crucial for weakly bound three-body systems, is described almost analytically for arbitrary potentials. The Efimov effect is especially considered. The geometric structures of the bound states are quantitatively investigated. The accuracy of the schematic models and previous computations is comparable, i.e. within 20% for the spatially extended states and within 40% for the smaller -trimer ground state.
The adiabatic hyperspherical method is used to investigate the spectrum of the helium trimer and to explore effects on the spectrum of varying the helium masses as well as the interaction strength. When a realistic helium dimer potential is adopted, only two isotopic combinations are observed to have three-body bound states: 4He3^{4}\mathrm{He}_{3}4He3​ and 4He23^{4}\mathrm{He}_{2}^{3}4He23​He. By artificially adjusting the dimer potential, we also determine the range of interaction strengths for which halo states can result. The existence of Efimov states for both physical and unphysical systems is also examined. \textcopyright{} 1996 American Institute of Physics.