Few-body physics with ultracold atomic and molecular systems in traps

TL;DR

This review discusses recent advances in understanding few-body phenomena in ultracold atomic and molecular systems confined in traps, highlighting experimental progress, theoretical insights, and connections to other physical systems.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of recent studies on few-body physics in trapped ultracold gases, emphasizing analytical solutions, system behaviors, and future challenges.

Findings

Analytical solutions for two- and three-body systems in traps

Insights into many-body behavior from few-body studies

Connections between ultracold systems and nuclear or quantum dot systems

Abstract

Few-body physics has played a prominent role in atomic, molecular and nuclear physics since the early days of quantum mechanics. It is now possible---thanks to tremendous progress in cooling, trapping, and manipulating ultracold samples---to experimentally study few-body phenomena in trapped atomic and molecular systems with unprecedented control. This review summarizes recent studies of few-body phenomena in trapped atomic and molecular gases, with an emphasis on small trapped systems. We start by introducing the free-space scattering properties and then investigate what happens when two particles, bosons or fermions, are placed in an external confinement. Next, various three-body systems are treated analytically in limiting cases. Our current understanding of larger two-component Fermi systems and Bose systems is reviewed, and connections with the corresponding bulk systems are established. Lastly, future prospects and challenges are discussed. Throughout this review, commonalities with other systems such as nuclei or quantum dots are highlighted.