Three-body bound states in atomic mixtures with resonant p-wave interaction

TL;DR

This paper investigates three-body bound states in atomic mixtures with resonant p-wave interactions, revealing an attractive long-range potential influenced by mass ratios and interaction parameters.

Contribution

It introduces a theoretical analysis of three-body systems with p-wave resonance using the Born-Oppenheimer approximation, highlighting the potential's characteristics and bound state dependence.

Findings

Effective potential is attractive and long-range at p-wave resonance.

Range and number of bound states depend on mass ratio and potential parameters.

Potential decreases as the cube of inter-atomic distance.

Abstract

We employ the Born-Oppenheimer approximation to find the effective potential in a three-body system consisting of a light particle and two heavy ones when the heavy-light short-range interaction potential has a resonance corresponding to a non-zero orbital angular momentum. In the case of an exact resonance in the p-wave scattering amplitude, the effective potential is attractive and long-range, namely it decreases as the third power of the inter-atomic distance. Moreover, we show that the range and power of the potential, as well as the number of bound states are determined by the mass ratio of the particles and the parameters of the heavy-light short-range potential.