2000/10/27 by Areez Mody, M. R. Haggerty, Michael Haggerty +4
Computer Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Atomic Physics (physics.atom-ph) #Atomic and Molecular Physics #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #FOS: Physical sciences #Quantum Information and Cryptography #physics.atom-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.physics/0010068
19 pages single column, 2 figures. Submitted to Physical Review B
arxiv created 2000/10/27 · openalex publication_date 2000/10/27 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We provide the theoretical basis for understanding the phenomenon in which an ultra cold atom incident on a possibly warm target will not stick, even in the large n limit where n is the number of internal degrees of freedom of the target. Our treatment is non-perturbative in which the full many-body problem is viewed as a scattering event purely within the context of scattering theory. The question of sticking is then simply and naturally identified with the formation of a long lived resonance. One crucial physical insight that emerges is that the many internal degrees of freedom serve to decohere the incident one body wavefunction, thus upsetting the delicate interference process necessary to form a resonance in the first place. This is the physical reason for not sticking.