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APS » Journals » Phys. Rev. A » Volume 70 » Issue 4
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Phys. Rev. A 70, 042706 (2004) [5 pages]

Enhanced dimer relaxation in an atomic and molecular Bose-Einstein condensate

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Eric Braaten*
Department of Physics, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 43210, USA

H.-W. Hammer†
Helmholtz-Institut für Strahlen- und Kernphysik (Abt. Theorie), Universität Bonn, 53115 Bonn, Germany

Received 14 January 2004; published 12 October 2004

We derive a universal formula for the rate constant β for relaxation of a shallow dimer into deeply-bound diatomic molecules in the case of atoms with a large scattering length a. We show that β is determined by a and by 2 three-body parameters that also determine the binding energies and widths of Efimov states. The rate constant β scales like ℏa∕m near the resonance, but the coefficient is a periodic function of ln(a) that may have resonant enhancement at values of a that differ by multiples of 22.7.

© 2004 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevA.70.042706
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevA.70.042706
PACS:
34.50.−s, 03.75.Nt, 21.45.+v

*Electronic address braaten@mps.ohio-state.edu

†Present address: Institute for Nuclear Theory, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA. Electronic address: hammer@phys.washington.edu

 
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