Energy-scaling of the product state distribution for three-body recombination of ultracold atoms

• Published in: arXiv.org
• Main Authors: Haze, Shinsuke, D'Incao, José P, Dorer, Dominik, Li, Jinglun, Markus Dei\ss, Tiemann, Eberhard, Julienne, Paul S, Johannes Hecker Denschlag
• Format: Paper Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Ithaca Cornell University Library, arXiv.org 09.11.2022
• Subjects: Binding energy; Chemical reactions; Physics - Atomic Physics; Physics - Quantum Physics; Scaling laws; Ultracold atoms
• ISSN: 2331-8422
• DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2211.03834

Three-body recombination is a chemical reaction where the collision of three atoms leads to the formation of a diatomic molecule. In the ultracold regime it is expected that the production rate of a molecule generally decreases with its binding energy \(E_b\), however, its precise dependence and the physics governing it have been left unclear so far. Here, we present a comprehensive experimental and theoretical study of the energy dependency for three-body recombination of ultracold Rb. For this, we determine production rates for molecules in a state-to-state resolved manner, with the binding energies \(E_b\) ranging from 0.02 to 77 GHz\(\times h\). We find that the formation rate approximately scales as \(E_b^{-\alpha}\), where \(\alpha\) is in the vicinity of 1. The formation rate typically varies only within a factor of two for different rotational angular momenta of the molecular product, apart from a possible centrifugal barrier suppression for low binding energies. In addition to numerical three-body calculations we present a perturbative model which reveals the physical origin of the energy scaling of the formation rate. Furthermore, we show that the scaling law potentially holds universally for a broad range of interaction potentials.