2011/03/30 by Timur V. Tscherbul, T. V. Tscherbul, Seth T. Rittenhouse
Chemistry · Physics and Astronomy · #Atomic and Subatomic Physics Research #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #Spectroscopy and Laser Applications #physics.atom-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physreva.84.062706
4 pages, 2 figures
arxiv created 2011/03/30 · openalex publication_date 2011/12/09 · arxiv updated 2015/05/27 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We present a theoretical analysis of rf association of Efimov trimers in a two-component Bose gas with short-range interactions. Using the adiabatic hyperspherical formalism to solve the quantum three-body problem, we obtain universal expressions for three-body rf association rates as a function of the s-wave scattering length a>0. We find that the association rates scale as a^\ensuremath-2 in the limit of large a, and diverge as a3aad3 whenever an Efimov state crosses the atom-dimer threshold (where aad stands for the atom-dimer scattering length). Our calculations show that trimer formation rates as large as \ensuremath∼10^\ensuremath-21 cm6/s can be achieved with rf Rabi frequencies on the order of 1 MHz, suggesting that direct rf association is a powerful tool for making and probing few-body quantum states in ultracold atomic gases.