Three-body recombination in heteronuclear mixtures at finite temperature

TL;DR

This paper calculates three-body recombination rates in heteronuclear mixtures at finite temperature, providing insights into loss resonances and Efimov universality, with implications for experiments like Cs-Li mixtures.

Contribution

It offers a universal zero-range theory-based computation of recombination rates, highlighting the impact of heavy-heavy interactions on loss rates.

Findings

Loss rate can be significantly enhanced by heavy-heavy interactions.

Results enable testing Efimov universality with experimental data.

Analysis relevant for recent Cs-Li mixture experiments.

Abstract

Within the universal zero-range theory, we compute the three-body recombination rate to deep molecular states for two identical bosons resonantly interacting with each other and with a third atom of another species, in the absence of weakly bound dimers. The results allow for a quantitative understanding of loss resonances at finite temperature and, combined with experimental data, can be used for testing the Efimov universality and extracting the corresponding three-body parameters in a given system. Curiously, we find that the loss rate can be dramatically enhanced by the resonant heavy-heavy interaction, even for large mass ratios where this interaction is practically irrelevant for the Efimov scaling factor. This effect is important for analysing the recent loss measurements in the Cs-Li mixture.