Observation of universality in ultracold 7Li three-body recombination

TL;DR

This paper presents experimental evidence of universal behavior in three-body recombination processes of ultracold 7Li atoms near a Feshbach resonance, confirming theoretical predictions about Efimov states and recombination minima.

Contribution

First experimental observation of universality in 7Li three-body recombination, validating universal theory predictions near a Feshbach resonance.

Findings

Observation of a recombination minimum

Detection of an Efimov resonance

Agreement with universal theory predictions

Abstract

We report on experimental evidence of universality in ultracold 7Li atoms' three-body recombination loss in the vicinity of a Feshbach resonance. We observe a recombination minimum and an Efimov resonance in regions of positive and negative scattering lengths, respectively, which are connected through the pole of the Feshbach resonance. Both observed features lie deeply within the range of validity of the universal theory and we find that the relations between their properties, i.e. widths and locations, are in an excellent agreement with the theoretical predictions.