Finite range effects in two-body and three-body interactions

Efimov physics in ultracold gases is described very well by the universal scaling laws, based on the scattering length and van der Waals length. The first can be tuned magnetically via a Feshbach resonance, the second is constant and connected to the radial range of the potential.However, experimental hints at non-universal behavior, when going away from resonance, are quite badly understood. The next leading coefficient in the scattering phase shift, the effective range parameter, gives an indication of this non-universality, but at the same time it can also be strongly dependent on the magnetic field. Moreover, higher-order terms take over quickly when increasing the collision energy. We show how the finite range corrections can be understood by making the connection to more fundamental parameters of the two-body physics, and use this description to derive a better criterion for entering the non-universal regime

Stability of rubidium molecules in the lowest triplet state

Experiments involving ultracold molecules require sufficiently long lifetimes, which can be very short for excited rovibrational states in the molecular potentials. For alkali-metal atoms such as rubidium, a lowest rovibrational molecular state can both be found in the electronic singlet and triplet configurations. The molecular singlet ground state is absolutely stable. However, the lowest triplet state can decay to a deeper bound singlet molecule due to a radiative decay mechanism that involves the interatomic spin-orbit interaction. We investigate this mechanism, and find the lifetime of rubidium molecules in the lowest triplet rovibrational state to be about 20 min.</p

BCS-BEC crossover in the strongly correlated regime of ultra-cold Fermi gases

We study BCS-BEC crossover in the strongly correlated regime of two component rotating Fermi gases. We predict that the strong correlations induced by rotation will have the effect of modifying the crossover region relative to the non-rotating situation. We show via the two particle correlation function that the crossover smoothly connects the s-wave paired fermionic fractional quantum Hall state to the bosonic Laughlin stat

Degenerate atom-molecule mixture in a cold Fermi gas

We show that the atom-molecule mixture formed in a degenerate atomic Fermi gas with interspecies repulsion near a Feshbach resonance constitutes a peculiar system where the atomic component is almost nondegenerate but quantum degeneracy of molecules is important. We develop a thermodynamic approach for studying this mixture, explain experimental observations, and predict optimal conditions for achieving molecular Bose-Einstein condensatio

Universal three-body parameter in ultracold 4He*

We have analyzed our recently-measured three-body loss rate coefficient for a Bose-Einstein condensate of spin-polarized metastable triplet 4He atoms in terms of Efimov physics. The large value of the scattering length for these atoms, which provides access to the Efimov regime, arises from a nearby potential resonance. We find the loss coefficient to be consistent with the three-body parameter (3BP) found in alkali-metal experiments, where Feshbach resonances are used to tune the interaction. This provides new evidence for a universal 3BP, the first outside the group of alkali-metal elements. In addition, we give examples of other atomic systems without Feshbach resonances but with a large scattering length that would be interesting to analyze once precise measurements of three-body loss are available

Strong spin-exchange recombination of three weakly interacting 7Li atoms

We reveal a significant spin-exchange pathway in the three-body recombination process for ultracold lithium-7 atoms near a zero-crossing of the two-body scattering length. This newly discovered recombination pathway involves the exchange of spin between all three atoms, which is not included in many theoretical approaches with restricted spin structure. Taking it into account, our calculation is in excellent agreement with experimental observations. To contrast our findings, we predict the recombination rate around a different zero-crossing without strong spin-exchange effects to be two orders of magnitude smaller, which gives a clear advantage to future many-body experiments in this regime. This work opens new avenues to study elementary reaction processes governed by the spin degree of freedom in ultracold gases