Interatomic collisions in two-dimensional and quasi-two-dimensional confinements with spin-orbit coupling

TL;DR

This paper studies how Rashba spin-orbit coupling affects low-energy scattering and bound states of two fermionic atoms in 2D and quasi-2D confinements, providing analytic expressions and effective interaction potentials.

Contribution

It offers the first analytic expressions for effective 2D scattering amplitude and bound state energies in the presence of SOC in quasi-2D systems.

Findings

SOC qualitatively alters low-energy 2D scattering behavior

Derived analytic expressions for quasi-2D scattering amplitude

Established effective 2D interaction potential with SOC

Abstract

We investigate the low-energy scattering and bound states of two two-component fermionic atoms in pure two-dimensional (2D) and quasi-2D confinements with Rashba spin-orbit coupling (SOC). We find that the SOC qualitatively changes the behavior of the 2D scattering amplitude in the low-energy limit. For quasi-2D systems we obtain the analytic expression for the effective-2D scattering amplitude and the algebraic equations for the two-atom bound state energy. Based on these results, we further derive the effective 2D interaction potential between two ultracold atoms in the quasi-2D confinement with Rashba SOC. These results are crucial for the control of the 2D effective physics in quasi-2D geometry via the confinement intensity and the atomic three-dimensional scattering length.