Energy-scaling of the product state distribution for three-body recombination of ultracold atoms
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...
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Published in | arXiv.org |
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Main Authors | , , , , , , , |
Format | Paper Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
Ithaca
Cornell University Library, arXiv.org
09.11.2022
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Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
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Summary: | 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. |
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ISSN: | 2331-8422 |
DOI: | 10.48550/arxiv.2211.03834 |