Anisotropic thermalization of dilute dipolar gases

TL;DR

This paper develops theoretical models to understand how anisotropic dipolar interactions affect thermalization in ultracold gases, providing practical formulas and validating them with simulations and experiments.

Contribution

It introduces new theoretical methods to quantify collisional rethermalization in anisotropic dipolar gases, applicable in experimental settings.

Findings

Models agree with Monte Carlo simulations.

Accurately describe recent experimental rethermalization data.

Dependence of rethermalization on dipole orientation and magnitude.

Abstract

We study collisional rethermalization in ultracold dipolar thermal gases, made intricate by their anisotropic differential cross sections. Theoretical methods are provided to derive the number of collisions per rethermalization, which for dipolar gases, is highly dependent on the dipole alignment axis. These methods are formulated to be easily applied in experimental contexts, even reducing to analytic expressions if the route to thermal equilibrium is governed by short-time dynamics. In the analytic case, collisional rethermalization is fully characterized by the dipole magnitude and orientation, scattering length, and thermalization geometry. These models compare favorably to Monte Carlo simulations, and are shown to model well a recent experimental result on the rethermalization of polar molecular samples.