No Arabic abstract
Ultracold atomic gases have recently become a driving force in few-body physics due to the observation of the Efimov effect. While initially observed in equal mass systems, one expects even richer few-body physics in the heteronuclear case. In previous experiments with ultracold mixtures of potassium and rubidium, an unexpected non-universal behavior of Efimov resonances was observed. In contrast, we measure the scattering length dependent three-body recombination coefficient in ultracold heteronuclear mixtures of $^{39}mathrm{K}$-87Rb and $^{41}mathrm{K}$-87Rb and do not observe any signatures of Efimov resonances for accessible scattering lengths in either mixture. Our results show good agreement with our theoretical model for the scattering dependent three-body recombination coefficient and reestablish universality across isotopic mixtures.
Recent measurements of Efimov resonances in a number of ultracold atom species have revealed an unexpected universality, in which three-body scattering properties are determined by the van der Waals length of the two-body interaction potential. To investigate whether this universality extends to heteronuclear mixtures, we measure loss rate coefficients in an ultracold trapped gas of $^{40}$K and $^{87}$Rb atoms. We find an Efimov-like resonance in the rate of inelastic collisions between $^{40}$K$^{87}$Rb Feshbach molecules and $^{87}$Rb atoms. However, we do not observe any Efimov-related resonances in the rates of inelastic collisions between three atoms. These observations are compared to previous measurements by the LENS group of Efimov resonances in a $^{41}$K and $^{87}$Rb mixture as well as to recent predictions.
We have analyzed our recently-measured three-body loss rate coefficient for a Bose-Einstein condensate of spin-polarized metastable triplet 4He atoms in terms of Efimov physics. The large value of the scattering length for these atoms, which provides access to the Efimov regime, arises from a nearby potential resonance. We find the loss coefficient to be consistent with the three-body parameter (3BP) found in alkali-metal experiments, where Feshbach resonances are used to tune the interaction. This provides new evidence for a universal 3BP, the first outside the group of alkali-metal elements. In addition, we give examples of other atomic systems without Feshbach resonances but with a large scattering length that would be interesting to analyze once precise measurements of three-body loss are available.
We study the two-body and three-body bound states in ultracold atomic mixtures with one of the atoms subjected to an isotropic spin-orbit (SO) coupling. We consider a system of two identical fermions interacting with one SO coupled atom. It is found that there can exist two types of three-body bound states, Efimov trimers and universal trimers. The Efimov trimers are energetically less favored by the SO coupling, which will finally merge into the atom-dimer threshold as increasing the SO coupling strength. Nevertheless, these trimers exhibit a new kind of discrete scaling law incorporating the SO coupling effect. On the other hand, the universal trimers are more favored by the SO coupling. They can be induced at negative s-wave scattering lengths and with smaller mass ratios than those without SO coupling. These results are obtained by both the Born-Oppenheimer approximation and exact solutions from three-body equations.
We have studied the three-body recombination rates on both sides of the interspecies d-wave Feshbach resonance in the $^{85}$Rb,-$^{87}$Rb-$^{87}$Rb system using the $R$-matrix propagation method in the hyperspherical coordinate frame. Two different mechanisms of recombination rate enhancement for positive and negative $^{85}$Rb,-$^{87}$Rb d-wave scattering lengths are analyzed. On the positive scattering length side, the recombination rate enhancement occurs due to the existence of three-body shape resonance, while on the negative scattering length side, the coupling between the lowest entrance channel and the highest recombination channel is crucial to the appearance of the enhancement. In addition, our study shows that the intraspecies interaction plays a significant role in determining the emergence of recombination rate enhancements. Compared to the case in which the three pairwise interactions are all in d-wave resonance, when the $^{87}$Rb-$^{87}$Rb interaction is near the d-wave resonance, the values of the interspecies scattering length that produce the recombination enhancement shift. In particular, when the $^{87}$Rb-$^{87}$Rb interaction is away from the d-wave resonance, the enhancement disappears on the negative interspecies scattering length side.
Few-body correlations emerging in two-dimensional harmonically trapped mixtures, are comprehensively investigated. The presence of the trap leads to the formation of atom-dimer and trap states, in addition to trimers. The Tans contacts of these eigenstates are studied for varying interspecies scattering lengths and mass ratio, while corresponding analytical insights are provided within the adiabatic hyperspherical formalism. The two- and three-body correlations of trimer states are substantially enhanced compared to the other eigenstates. The two-body contact of the atom-dimer and trap states features an upper bound regardless of the statistics, treated semi-classically and having an analytical prediction in the limit of large scattering lengths. Such an upper bound is absent in the three-body contact. Interestingly, by tuning the interspecies scattering length the contacts oscillate as the atom-dimer and trap states change character through the existent avoided-crossings in the energy spectra. For thermal gases, a gradual suppression of the involved two- and three-body correlations is evinced manifesting the impact of thermal effects. Moreover, spatial configurations of the distinct eigenstates ranging from localized structures to angular anisotropic patterns are captured. Our results provide valuable insights into the inherent correlation mechanisms of few-body mixtures which can be implemented in recent ultracold atom experiments and will be especially useful for probing the crossover from few- to many-atom systems.