Elastic and inelastic collisions of 6Li in magnetic and optical traps

TL;DR

This paper calculates collisional properties of ultracold 6Li in magnetic and optical traps, identifying Feshbach resonances and providing analytical approximations for coupled channels results.

Contribution

It presents a full coupled channels calculation of 6Li collisional properties and introduces a simple analytical approximation for these results.

Findings

Identification of Feshbach resonances at 0.08 T and 1.98 T.

Calculation of magnetic field dependence of s-wave scattering lengths.

Decay rates due to exchange collisions are determined.

Abstract

We use a full coupled channels method to calculate collisional properties of magnetically or optically trapped ultracold 6Li. The magnetic field dependence of the s-wave scattering lengths of several mixtures of hyperfine states are determined, as are the decay rates due to exchange collisions. In one case, we find Feshbach resonances at B=0.08 T and B=1.98 T. We show that the exact coupled channels calculation is well approximated over the entire range of magnetic fields by a simple analytical calculation.