Limits on Universality in Ultracold Three-Boson Recombination

J.P. D'Incao
(Dept. of Physics, Kansas State University),

H Suno
(RIKEN),

B.D. Esry
(Dept. of Physics, Kansas State University)

One of the remarkable results to emerge from recent work on ultracold collisions is that low temperature three-body physics, such as three-body recombination, displays universal behavior. We present numerical results that help us identify the limits of this universal behavior. We find that it holds only in the threshold regime roughly defined as E \le \hbar^2/2\mu_12a^2, where E is the three-body collision energy, \mu_12 is the two-body reduced mass, and a is the two-body s-wave scattering length. One consequence of this result is the truncation of the predicted infinite series of interference minima and resonance peaks in the rate when a is tuned from -\infty to +\infty; another is the reduction of the intensity of the minima and resonances. Any experimental effort to observe these phenomena --- and thus physics related to the Efimov effect --- is, in turn, a much more difficult proposition.

This work was supported by the Chemical Sciences, Geosciences and Biosciences Division,
Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Office of Science, U.S. Department of Energy.

Submitted to DAMOP, May 2004 in Tucson, AZ.