Collisional relaxation of Feshbach molecules and three-body recombination in 87Rb Bose-Einstein condensates

TL;DR

This paper predicts and experimentally confirms the magnetic field dependence of atom-dimer relaxation and three-body recombination rates in a $^{87}$Rb BEC near 1007 G, highlighting the influence of Feshbach resonances on loss phenomena.

Contribution

It provides an exact theoretical treatment of three-particle scattering including Zeeman level interactions and confirms predictions through two independent experiments.

Findings

Recombination loss rates vary over four orders of magnitude.

Feshbach resonance distorts diatomic energy spectrum causing interference effects.

Experimental results match theoretical predictions.

Abstract

We predict the resonance enhanced magnetic field dependence of atom-dimer relaxation and three-body recombination rates in a $^{87}$Rb Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) close to 1007 G. Our exact treatments of three-particle scattering explicitly include the dependence of the interactions on the atomic Zeeman levels. The Feshbach resonance distorts the entire diatomic energy spectrum causing interferences in both loss phenomena. Our two independent experiments confirm the predicted recombination loss over a range of rate constants that spans four orders of magnitude.