Effective scattering and Efimov physics in the presence of two-body dissipation

• Published in: Physical review research Vol. 3; no. 4; p. 043225
• Main Authors: Zhou, Lihong, Cui, Xiaoling
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: American Physical Society 01.12.2021
• ISSN: 2643-1564; 2643-1564
• DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevResearch.3.043225

Two-body dissipation usually gives rise to a complex interaction. Here we study the effect of two-body dissipation on few-body physics, including the fundamental two-body effective scattering and the three-body Efimov physics. By employing a two-channel model that incorporates the decay of closed-channel molecules (generating the two-body dissipation), we explicitly relate the real and imaginary part of the inverse scattering length (a_{s}^{−1}) to closed-channel detuning and decay rate. In particular, we show that the imaginary part of a_{s}^{−1} is given by the product of the molecule decay rate and the effective range. Such complex scattering length is found to generate an additional imaginary Coulomb potential when three atoms come close to each other, thereby suppressing the formation of trimer bound states and modifying the conventional discrete scaling in Efimov physics.