Adiabatic hyperspherical study of triatomic helium systems

TL;DR

This study uses the adiabatic hyperspherical method to analyze helium triatomic systems, calculating bound states, scattering, and reaction rates with advanced potentials, revealing the significance of retardation effects.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of helium triatomic systems using the latest interaction potentials, including retardation and three-body effects, which are evaluated for their impact on physical properties.

Findings

Retardation effects are significant in certain cases.

The nonadditive three-body term has a minor impact.

Calculated properties include bound states and reaction rates.

Abstract

The 4He3 system is studied using the adiabatic hyperspherical representation. We adopt the current state-of-the-art helium interaction potential including retardation and the nonadditive three-body term, to calculate all low-energy properties of the triatomic 4He system. The bound state energies of the 4He trimer are computed as well as the 4He+4He2 elastic scattering cross sections, the three-body recombination and collision induced dissociation rates at finite temperatures. We also treat the system that consists of two 4He and one 3He atoms, and compute the spectrum of the isotopic trimer 4He2 3He, the 3He+4He2 elastic scattering cross sections, the rates for three-body recombination and the collision induced dissociation rate at finite temperatures. The effects of retardation and the nonadditive three-body term are investigated. Retardation is found to be significant in some cases, while the three-body term plays only a minor role for these systems.