Diagrammatic Monte Carlo approach to angular momentum in quantum many-particle systems

We introduce a Diagrammatic Monte Carlo (DiagMC) approach to angular momentum properties of quantum many-particle systems possessing a macroscopic number of degrees of freedom. The treatment is based on a diagrammatic expansion that merges the usual Feynman diagrams with the angular momentum diagrams known from atomic and nuclear structure theory, thereby incorporating the non-Abelian algebra inherent to quantum rotations. Our approach is applicable at arbitrary coupling, is free of systematic errors and of finite size effects, and naturally provides access to the impurity Green function. We exemplify the technique by obtaining an all-coupling solution of the angulon model, however, the method is quite general and can be applied to a broad variety of systems in which particles exchange quantum angular momentum with their many-body environment.Comment: 6+5 pages, 2+2 figures, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. Let

Sympathetic cooling of polyatomic molecules with S-state atoms in a magnetic trap

We present a rigorous theoretical study of low-temperature collisions of polyatomic molecular radicals with ^1S_0 atoms in the presence of an external magnetic field. Accurate quantum scattering calculations based on ab initio and scaled interaction potentials show that collision-induced spin relaxation of the prototypical organic molecule CH_2(X^3B_1) (methylene) and nine other triatomic radicals in cold 3He gas occurs at a slow rate, demonstrating that cryogenic buffer-gas cooling and magnetic trapping of these molecules is feasible with current technology. Our calculations further suggest that it may be possible to create ultracold gases of polyatomic molecules by sympathetic cooling with alkaline-earth atoms in a magnetic trap.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, 1 tabl

Three-body rf association of Efimov trimers

We present a theoretical analysis of rf association of Efimov trimers in a 2-component Bose gas with short-range interactions. Using the adiabatic hyperspherical Green's function formalism to solve the quantum 3-body problem, we obtain universal expressions for 3-body rf association rates as a function of the s-wave scattering length $a$. We find that the association rates scale as $a^{-2}$ in the limit of large $a$, and diverge as $a^3 a_{ad}^{3}$ whenever an Efimov state crosses the atom-dimer threshold (where $a_{ad}$ stands for the atom-dimer scattering length). Our calculations show that trimer formation rates as large as $\sim10^{-21}$ cm$^6$/s can be achieved with rf Rabi frequencies of order 1 MHz, suggesting that direct rf association is a powerful tool of making and probing few-body quantum states in ultracold atomic gases.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure

A fundamental limit to the efficiency of spin-exchange optical pumping of 3He nuclei

We establish the existence of a fundamental limit to the efficiency of spin-exchange optical pumping of 3He nuclei by collisions with spin-polarized alkali-metal atoms. Using accurate ab initio calculations of molecular interactions and scattering properties, we show that the maximum 3He spin polarization that can be achieved in spin-exchange collisions with potassium (39K) and silver (107Ag) atoms is limited by the anisotropic hyperfine interaction. We find that spin exchange in Ag-He collisions occurs much faster than in K-He collisions, suggesting the possibility of using Ag in spin-exchange optical pumping experiments to increase the production rate of hyperpolarized 3He. Our analysis indicates that measurements of trap loss rates of 2S atoms in the presence of cold 3He gas may be used to probe anisotropic spin-exchange interactions in atom-He collisions.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

Feshbach resonances in ultracold 85Rb-87Rb and 6Li-87Rb mixtures

We present an analysis of experimentally accessible magnetic Feshbach resonances in ultra-cold hetero-nuclear 85Rb-87Rb and 6Li-87Rb mixtures. Using recent experimental measurements of the triplet scattering lengths for 6Li-87Rb and 7Li-87Rb mixtures and Feshbach resonances for one combination of atomic states, we create model potential curves and fine tune them to reproduce the measured resonances and to predict the location of several experimentally relevant resonances in Li-Rb collisions. To model 85Rb-87Rb collisions, we use accurate Rb_2 potentials obtained previously from the analysis of experiments on 87Rb-87Rb collisions. We find resonances that occur at very low magnetic fields, below 10 G, which may be useful for entanglement generation in optical lattices or atom chip magnetic traps.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figure

Total angular momentum representation for atom-molecule collisions in electric fields

It is shown that the atom-molecule collision problem in the presence of an external electric field can be solved using the total angular momentum representation in the body-fixed coordinated frame, leading to a computationally efficient method for ab initio modeling of low-temperature scattering phenomena. Our calculations demonstrate rapid convergence of the cross sections for vibrational and Stark relaxation in He-CaD collisions with the number of total angular momentum states in the basis set, leading to a 5-100 fold increase in computational efficiency over the previously used methods based on the fully uncoupled space-fixed representation. These results open up the possibility of carrying out numerically converged quantum scattering calculations on a wide array of atom-molecule collisions and chemical reactions in the presence of electric fields.Comment: 19 pages, 3 figures, 1 tabl