We present a simple and unifying picture that provides the energy and scattering length dependence for all inelastic three-body collision rates in the ultracold regime for three-body systems with short-range two-body interactions. Here, we present the scaling laws for vibrational relaxation, three-body recombination, and collision-induced dissociation for systems that support s-wave two-body collisions. These systems include three identical bosons, two identical bosons, and two identical fermions. Our approach reproduces all previous results, predicts several others, and gives the general form of the scaling laws in all cases.
We present a simple and unifying picture that provides the energy and scattering length dependence for all inelastic three-body collision rates in the ultracold regime for three-body systems with short-range two-body interactions. Here, we present the scaling laws for vibrational relaxation, three-body recombination, and collision-induced dissociation for systems that support s-wave two-body collisions. These systems include three identical bosons, two identical bosons, and two identical fermions. Our approach reproduces all previous results, predicts several others, and gives the general form of the scaling laws in all cases.
We study three-body recombination in two dimensions for systems interacting via short-range two-body interactions in the regime of large scattering lengths. Using the adiabatic hyperspherical representation, we derive semianalytical formulas for three-body recombination in both weakly and deeply bound diatom states. Our results demonstrate the importance of long-range corrections to the three-body potentials by showing how they alter the low-energy and scattering-length dependence of the recombination rate for both bosonic and fermionic systems, which exhibit suppressed recombination if compared to the three-dimensional case. We verify these results through numerical calculations of recombination for systems with finite-range interactions and supporting a few two-body bound states. We also study finite-range effects for the energies of the universal three-identical-bosons states and find a slow approach to universal predictions as a function of the scattering length.
We show that many aspects of ultracold three-body collisions can be controlled by choosing the mass ratio between the collision partners. In the ultracold regime, the scattering length dependence of the three-body rates can be substantially modified from the equal mass results. We demonstrate that the only nontrivial mass dependence is due solely to Efimov physics. We have determined the mass dependence of the three-body collision rates for all heteronuclear combinations relevant for two-component atomic gases with resonant s-wave interspecies interactions, i.e., three-body systems with two identical bosons or two identical fermions.
For identical bosons with a large scattering length, the dependence of the three-body recombination rate on the collision energy is determined in the zero-range limit by universal functions of a single scaling variable. There are six scaling functions for angular momentum zero and one scaling function for each higher partial wave. We calculate these universal functions by solving the Skorniakov-Ter-Martirosian equation. The results for the three-body recombination as a function of the collision energy are in good agreement with previous results from solving the three-body Schr\"odinger equation for 4He atoms. The universal scaling functions can be used to calculate the three-body recombination rate at nonzero temperature. We obtain an excellent fit to the data from Grimm and co-workers for 133Cs atoms with a large positive scattering length.
We study the wave function φ(3) of three identical bosons scattering at zero energy, zero total momentum, and zero orbital angular momentum in two dimensions, interacting via short-range potentials with a finite two-body scattering length a. We derive asymptotic expansions of φ(3) in two regimes: the 111-expansion, where all three pairwise distances are large, and the 21-expansion, where one particle is far from the other two. In the 111-expansion, the leading term grows as ln3(B/a) at large hyperradius B=(s12+s22+s32)/2. At order B−2ln−3(B/a), we identify a three-body parameter D with dimension of length squared, which we term the three-body scattering area. This quantity should be contrasted with the three-body scattering area previously studied for infinite or vanishing two-body scattering length. If the two-body interaction is attractive and supports bound states, D acquires a negative imaginary part, and we derive its relation to the probability amplitudes for the production of two-body bound states in three-body collisions. Under weak modifications of the interaction potentials, we derive the corresponding shift of D in terms of φ(3) and the changes of the two-body and three-body potentials. We also study the effects of D and φ(3) on three-body and many-body physics, including the three-body ground-state energy in a large periodic volume, the many-body energy and the three-body correlation function of the dilute two-dimensional Bose gas, and the three-body recombination rates of two-dimensional ultracold atomic Bose gases.
We experimentally confirmed the threshold behavior and scattering length scaling law of the three-body loss coefficients in an ultracold spin-polarized gas of ^{6}Li atoms near a p-wave Feshbach resonance. We measured the three-body loss coefficients as functions of temperature and scattering volume, and we found that the threshold law and the scattering length scaling law hold in limited temperature and magnetic field regions. We also found that the breakdown of the scaling laws is due to the emergence of the effective-range term. This work is an important first step towards a full understanding of the loss of identical fermions with p-wave interactions.
We obtain the threshold laws for three-body recombination of particles interacting via short-range potentials, taking into account all combinations of particle symmetry. In particular, we show that the recombination rate is constant at zero energy unless indistinguishable fermions are present. In this case, the rate is suppressed by either a factor of E or E2 for two or three indistinguishable fermions, respectively. In addition, we present the threshold law for collision-induced dissociation.