Evidence for Efimov quantum states in an ultracold gas of caesium atoms
By T. Kraemer, M. Mark, P. Waldburger, J. Danzl, C. Chin, B. Engeser, A. Lange, K. Pilch, A. Jaakkola, H. Nägerl and 5 more. Nature, 2005
857 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Systems of three interacting particles are notorious for their complex physical behaviour. A landmark theoretical result in few-body quantum physics is Efimov's prediction of a universal set of bound trimer states appearing for three identical bosons with a resonant two-body interaction. Counterintuitively, these states even exist in the absence of a corresponding two-body bound state. Since the formulation of Efimov's problem in the context of nuclear physics 35 years ago, it has attracted great interest in many areas of physics. However, the observation of Efimov quantum states has remained an elusive goal. Here we report the observation of an Efimov resonance in an ultracold gas of caesium atoms. The resonance occurs in the range of large negative two-body scattering lengths, arising from the coupling of three free atoms to an Efimov trimer. Experimentally, we observe its signature as a giant three-body recombination loss when the strength of the two-body interaction is varied. We also detect a minimum in the recombination loss for positive scattering lengths, indicating destructive interference of decay pathways. Our results confirm central theoretical predictions of Efimov physics and represent a starting point with which to explore the universal properties of resonantly interacting few-body systems. While Feshbach resonances have provided the key to control quantum-mechanical interactions on the two-body level, Efimov resonances connect ultracold matter to the world of few-body quantum phenomena.
Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ab417e2956347cb84bd9f68a3a314e4cf14f4c5b
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In Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics
Citations in the corpus
- Observation of an Efimov-like trimer resonance in ultracold atom–dimer scattering (2008, methodology): “Its unusual magnetic-field dependence is explained by a broad Feshbach resonance at a magnetic field of −12 G [1, 14] along with an extraordinarily large background scattering length and allows to tune a from large negative to positive values with a zero crossing at 17 G.”
- Feshbach resonances in ultracold gases (2008, background): “By applying magnetic fields between 0 G and 150G, (Kraemer et al., 2006) varied the s-wave scattering length a between−2500 a0 and 1600 a0, large enough to study the universal regime, which requires |a| ≫ Rvdw ≃ 100 a0.”
- Comparing and contrasting nuclei and cold atomic gases (2013, background): “…the last five years a number of papers reported on experimental results obtained for cold atoms in traps and with Feshbach resonance techniques (Kraemer et al. 2006, Ottenstein et al. 2008, Zaccanti et al. 2009, Gross et al. 2009, Pollack, Dries & Hulet 2009, Barontini et al. 2009, Knoop et…”
- Two-orbital SU(N) magnetism with ultracold alkaline-earth atoms (2009, background): “Three-body recombination [70, 82, 83, 84, 85] is a process during which three atoms come together to form a diatomic bound state and a single atom, and both final products have enough kinetic energy to leave the trap.”
- Cold and ultracold molecules: science, technology and applications (2009, background): “In a series of experiments, the Innsbruck group has demonstrated the existence of both Cs3 and Cs4 molecular states by observing resonant features in the collisional loss of ultracold Cs atoms or ultracold Cs2 molecules [365, 366, 367, 368].”
- Microscopic clustering in light nuclei (2017, background): “Phys., Vol. 90, No. 3, July–September 2018 035004-36 to a universal Efimov trimer (Efimov, 1971; Braaten and Hammer, 2006; Kraemer et al., 2006).”
- Universal few-body physics and cluster formation (2017, methodology): “in 2006 by Rudi Grimm’s group in Innsbruck (Kraemer et al., 2006).”