Causality, universality, and effective field theory for van der Waals interactions

We analyze low-energy scattering for arbitrary short-range interactions plus an attractive 1/r^6 tail. We derive the constraints of causality and unitarity and find that the van der Waals length scale dominates over parameters characterizing the short-distance physics of the interaction. This separa...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inarXiv.org
Main Authors Elhatisari, Serdar, König, Sebastian, Lee, Dean, H -W Hammer
Format Paper Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Ithaca Cornell University Library, arXiv.org 16.05.2013
Subjects
Field theory
Magnetic resonance
Physics - Atomic Physics
Physics - Nuclear Theory
Physics - Quantum Gases
System effectiveness
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Summary:We analyze low-energy scattering for arbitrary short-range interactions plus an attractive 1/r^6 tail. We derive the constraints of causality and unitarity and find that the van der Waals length scale dominates over parameters characterizing the short-distance physics of the interaction. This separation of scales suggests a separate universality class for physics characterizing interactions with an attractive 1/r^6 tail. We argue that a similar universality class exists for any attractive potential 1/r^{alpha} for alpha >= 2. We also discuss the extension to multi-channel systems near a magnetic Feshbach resonance. We discuss the implications for effective field theory with attractive singular power law tails.
ISSN:2331-8422
DOI:10.48550/arxiv.1303.5261