Unitarity-limited behavior of three-body collisions in a p-wave interacting Fermi gas

TL;DR

This study experimentally explores the universal behavior of three-body losses in a p-wave Fermi gas near a Feshbach resonance, confirming temperature scaling laws and theoretical models for interaction-dependent loss rates.

Contribution

It provides the first experimental verification of the unitarity-limited three-body loss behavior in a p-wave Fermi gas and compares results with theoretical models based on quasibound states.

Findings

Three-body loss coefficient $L_3$ is universal at unitarity and scales as $T^{-2}$.

Loss rates decrease with reduced interaction strength, matching theoretical predictions.

Results enhance understanding of resonant p-wave Fermi gases for quantum many-body physics.

Abstract

We experimentally investigate the unitarity-limited behavior of the three-body loss near a p-wave Feshbach resonance in a single-component Fermi gas of $^6$Li atoms. At the unitarity limit, the three-body loss coefficient $L_{3}$ exhibits universality in the sense that it is independent of the interaction strength and follows the predicted temperature scaling law of $L_3 \propto T^{-2}$. When decreasing the interaction strength from the unitarity regime, the three-body loss coefficient as a function of the interaction strength and temperature can be described by the theory based on the association of an excited resonant quasibound state and its relaxation into a deep stable dimer by collision with a third atom in the framework of the standard Breit-Wigner theoretical approach. The results reported here are important to understand the properties of a resonant p-wave Fermi gas in the prospect of quantum few- and many-body physics.