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arXiv:physics/0508058 · Physical Review Letters

Controlling Collisions of Ultracold Atoms with dc Electric Fields

Roman V. Krems

Published Mar 28, 2006• 102 citations
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Abstract

It is demonstrated that elastic collisions of ultracold atoms forming a heteronuclear collision complex can be manipulated by laboratory practicable dc electric fields. The mechanism of electric field control is based on the interaction of the instantaneous dipole moment of the collision pair with external electric fields. It is shown that this interaction is dramatically enhanced in the presence of a p-wave shape or Feshbach scattering resonance near the collision threshold, which leads to novel electric-field-induced Feshbach resonances.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.96.123202

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It is demonstrated that elastic collisions of ultracold atoms forming a heteronuclear collision complex can be manipulated by laboratory practicable dc electric fields. The mechanism of electric field control is based on the interaction of the instantaneous dipole moment of the collision pair with external electric fields. It is shown that this interaction is dramatically enhanced in the presence of a p-wave shape or Feshbach scattering resonance near the collision threshold, which leads to novel electric-field-induced Feshbach resonances.
This Thesis describes new mechanisms for controlling elastic and inelastic collisions of ultracold atoms and molecules with static electromagnetic and laser fields. The dynamical properties of ultracold atoms are usually tuned in experiments by applying an external magnetic field to induce a Feshbach resonance. The work presented in this Thesis demonstrates the possibility of inducing and manipulating Feshbach resonances with electric fields. We discuss in detail the mechanisms of electric-field-induced resonances in ultracold mixtures of alkali metal atoms and demonstrate that electric fields may shift and split the magnetic resonances. We show that electric fields may spin up the collision complex of ultracold atoms and induce anisotropic scattering which may be exploited in experiments on many-body dynamics of ultracold gaseous mixtures. The mechanisms of electric-field-induced resonances described in this Thesis allow for two-dimensional control of inter-particle interactions, leading to total control over ultracold gases. To guide future experiments, we generate accurate interaction potentials for ultracold Li--Rb mixtures by fitting positions and widths of experimentally measured Feshbach resonances. Ultracold atomic and molecular gases can be confined by laser fields in one or two dimensions which produces an optical lattice of ultracold particles. We develop a multichannel scattering theory for collisions of atoms and molecules in two dimensions and explore the effects of the confining laser potential on inelastic and reactive collisions of ultracold atoms and molecules in a 1D optical lattice. We show that ultracold collisions can be controlled in a quasi-2D geometry by varying the orientation of a magnetic field with respect to the confinement plane normal and demonstrate that the threshold energy dependence of cross sections for inelastic collisions in an optical lattice can be tuned by varying the confining potential and the magnetic field. Our results show that applying laser confinement in one dimension may stabilize ultracold systems with large scattering lengths, which may open up interesting opportunities for studies of ultracold controlled chemistry and might lead to a new research direction of ultracold chemistry in restricted geometries.
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We present a detailed analysis of Feshbach resonances in ultracold collisions of Li and Cs atoms in the presence of superimposed electric and magnetic fields. We show that electric fields induce resonances through couplings between the sss- and ppp-wave scattering channels and modify the scattering length to a great extent. Electric-field-induced resonances lead to the anisotropy of ultracold scattering and provide the diagnostics for magnetic ppp-wave resonances in ultracold gases. We show that the electric field couplings may shift the positions of sss-wave magnetic resonances, thereby making the electric field control of ultracold atoms possible even far away from ppp-wave resonances. Finally, we demonstrate that electric fields may rotate and spin up the collision complex of ultracold atoms at substantial rates.
We present a detailed analysis of Feshbach resonances in ultracold collisions of Li and Cs atoms in the presence of superimposed electric and magnetic fields. We show that electric fields induce resonances through couplings between the sss- and ppp-wave scattering channels and modify the scattering length to a great extent. Electric-field-induced resonances lead to the anisotropy of ultracold scattering and provide the diagnostics for magnetic ppp-wave resonances in ultracold gases. We show that the electric field couplings may shift the positions of sss-wave magnetic resonances, thereby making the electric field control of ultracold atoms possible even far away from ppp-wave resonances. Finally, we demonstrate that electric fields may rotate and spin up the collision complex of ultracold atoms at substantial rates.
The effects of combined external electric and magnetic fields on elastic collisions in ultracold Li-Rb mixtures are studied using recently obtained experimentally verified potentials. Our analysis provides both quantitative predictions for and a detailed physical interpretation of the phenomena arising from electric-field-induced interactions. It is shown that the electric field shifts the positions of intrinsic magnetic Feshbach resonances, generates copies of resonances previously restricted to a particular partial-wave collision to other partial-wave channels, and splits Feshbach resonances into multiple resonances for states of nonzero angular momenta. It was recently observed that the magnetic dipole-dipole interaction can also lift the degeneracy of a ppp-wave state splitting of the associated ppp-wave Feshbach resonance into two distinct resonances at different magnetic fields. Our work shows that the splitting of the resonances produced by an applied electric field is more than 1 order of magnitude larger. This phenomenon offers a complementary way to produce and tune an anisotropic interaction and to study its effect on the many-body physics of heteronuclear atomic gases.
We propose a physical mechanism for tuning the atom-atom interaction strength at ultralow temperatures. In the presence of a dc electric field the interatomic potential is changed due to the effective dipole-dipole interaction between the polarized atoms. Detailed multichannel scattering calculations reveal features never before discussed for ultracold atomic collisions. We demonstrate that optimal control of the effective atom-atom interactions can be achieved under reasonable laboratory conditions. Implications of this research on the physics of atomic Bose-Einstein condensation and on the pursuit for atomic degenerate fermion gases will be discussed.