Photo Reactions with Universal Trimers

TL;DR

This paper investigates how universal bosonic trimers respond to photoassociation and photodissociation, revealing log periodic oscillations in response functions that are signatures of Efimov physics, with implications for ultracold atom experiments.

Contribution

It identifies two physical regimes affecting current response and demonstrates the universal oscillatory behavior linked to Efimov states in photo reactions.

Findings

Log periodic oscillations occur at high frequencies in response functions.

Near threshold, oscillations are only in s-wave components.

These oscillations serve as signatures of Efimov physics.

Abstract

Considering one-body and two-body currents, we study the photoassociation and photodissociation of universal bosonic trimers. Analyzing the relative importance of these currents we identify two physical scenarios (i) Normal hierarchy, where naive power counting holds and the one-body current dominates, and (ii) Strong hierarchy, where the one-body current is suppressed. For both scenarios we observe that at the high frequency tail, the response function exhibits log periodic oscillations in transition to or from any continuum state regardless of the reaction partial wave channel. In contrast, near threshold log periodic oscillations appear only in the leading $s$-wave components. These oscillations are the fingerprints of universal Efimov physics. We discuss the relevance of this effect to contemporary experiments in ultracold atoms.