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arXiv:physics/0403080 · Physical Review Letters

Limits on Universality in Ultracold Three-Boson Recombination

José Paulo D'Incao, Hiroya Suno, Brett D. Esry

Published Sep 14, 2004• 105 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

The recombination rate for three identical bosons has been calculated to test the limits of its universal behavior. It has been obtained for several different collision energies and scattering lengths a up to 10(5) a.u., giving rates that vary over 15 orders of magnitude. We find that universal behavior is limited to the threshold region characterized by E equal or less than Planck's 2/2mu(12)a(2), where E is the total energy and mu(12) is the two-body reduced mass. The analytically predicted infinite series of resonance peaks and interference minima is truncated to no more than three of each for typical experimental parameters.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.93.123201

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The recombination rate for three identical bosons has been calculated to test the limits of its universal behavior. It has been obtained for several different collision energies and scattering lengths a up to 10(5) a.u., giving rates that vary over 15 orders of magnitude. We find that universal behavior is limited to the threshold region characterized by E equal or less than Planck's 2/2mu(12)a(2), where E is the total energy and mu(12) is the two-body reduced mass. The analytically predicted infinite series of resonance peaks and interference minima is truncated to no more than three of each for typical experimental parameters.
This work treats resonant collisions between five identical ultracold bosons in the framework of the adiabatic hyperspherical representation. The five-body recombination rate coefficient is quantified using a semiclassical description in conjunction with an analysis of the lowest five-body hyperspherical adiabatic potential curves in a scattering length regime with no universal weakly bound tetramers, trimers, or dimers. A comparison is made between these results and the only existing experimental measurement of five-body loss in an ultracold gas of bosonic cesium atoms and with the lone theoretical estimation of the loss rate. The recombination rate for the process B + B + B + B + B → B 4 + B is also computed in a different regime of scattering lengths where there is one universal bound tetramer by implementing a few-channel quantum scattering calculation based on five-body hyperspherical potential curves and nonadiabatic couplings. Our calculations predict regions where five-body recombination can cause decay of the atom cloud in an ultracold gas that is even faster than 3-body and 4-body recombination, which can ideally be tested by using the current generation of box traps having nearly uniform density.
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^{4}\mathrm{He}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^{133}\mathrm{Cs}133Cs atoms with a large positive scattering length.
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.
For atoms with large scattering length, the dependence of the three-body recombination rate on the collision energy is determined by the scattering length and the Efimov three-body parameters and can be expressed in terms of universal functions of a single scaling variable. We use published results on the three-body recombination rate for 4He^{4}\mathrm{He}4He atoms to constrain the universal functions. We then use those universal functions to calculate the three-body recombination rate for other atoms with large scattering length at nonzero temperature. The constraints from the 4He^{4}\mathrm{He}4He results are strong if the scattering length is near the minimum of the three-body recombination rate at threshold. We apply our results to 133Cs^{133}\mathrm{Cs}133Cs atoms with a large positive scattering length, and compare them with experimental results from the Innsbruck group.
The threshold recombination coefficient for three bosons whose two-body scattering length aaa is positive and large compared with the nominal range of the potentials is shown to proceed via a crossing of hyperspherical adiabatic potential curves at $R\ensuremath{\approx}2.6a$. The hidden crossing theory gives a simple expression for the rate in terms of the scattering length and a phase $\ensuremath{\Delta}$. The phase depends upon the details of the interaction, and varies from species to species, however an upper limit to the rate which depends only upon the scattering length emerges from the hidden crossing theory.
We discuss three-body recombination of ultracold atoms to a weakly bound sss level. In this case, characterized by large and positive scattering length aaa for pair interaction, we find a repulsive effective potential for three-body collisions, which strongly reduces the recombination probability. In the zero temperature limit we obtain a universal relation, independent of the detailed shape of the interaction potential, for the (event) rate constant of three-body recombination: ${\ensuremath{\alpha}}_{\mathrm{rec}}\phantom{\rule{0ex}{0ex}}=\phantom{\rule{0ex}{0ex}}3.9\ensuremath{\Elzxh}{a}^{4}/m$, where mmm is the atom mass.