Looking for "avalanche-mechanism" loss at an atom-molecule Efimov resonance

Abstract

The "avalanche mechanism" has been used to relate Efimov trimer states to certain enhanced atom loss features observed in ultracold atom gas experiments. These atom loss features are argued to be a signature of resonant atom-molecule scattering that occurs when an Efimov trimer is degenerate with the atom-molecule scattering threshold. However, observation of these atom loss features has yet to be combined with the direct observation of atom-molecule resonant scattering for any particular atomic species. In addition, recent Monte-Carlo simulations were unable to reproduce a narrow loss feature. We experimentally search for enhanced atom loss features near an established scattering resonance between 40K87Rb Feshbach molecules and 87Rb atoms. Our measurements of both the three-body recombination rate in a gas of 40K and 87Rb atoms and the ratio of the number loss for the two species do not show any broad loss feature and are therefore inconsistent with theoretical predictions that use the avalanche mechanism.

5 pages, 3 figures

References in corpus (10)

• Observation of an Efimov spectrum in an atomic system
• Collisional stability of a three-component degenerate Fermi gas
• Three-body recombination in a three-state Fermi gas with widely tunable interactions
• Three-body recombination at large scattering lengths in an ultracold atomic gas
• Observation of an Efimov-like resonance in ultracold atom-dimer scattering
• Observation of heteronuclear atomic Efimov resonances
• Observation of Efimov Resonances in a Mixture with Extreme Mass Imbalance
• Efimov Physics in Cold Atoms
• Heteronuclear molecules in an optical dipole trap
• Atom-Dimer Scattering in a Three-Component Fermi Gas

Cited by in corpus (8)

• Resonant atom-dimer collisions in cesium: Testing universality at positive scattering lengths
• Probing the Efimov discrete scaling in atom-molecule collision
• A coherent superposition of Feshbach dimers and Efimov trimers
• Observation of Anomalous Decay of a Polarized Three-Component Fermi Gas
• Fermions meet two bosons -- the heteronuclear Efimov effect revisited
• An experimental platform for studying the heteronuclear Efimov effect with an ultracold mixture of ${}^6$Li and ${}^{133}$Cs atoms
• Three-body recombination near the d-wave resonance in ultracold ${}^{85}$Rb\,-${}^{87}$Rb mixtures
• Three-body Physics in the Impurity Limit of 39K Bose-Einstein Condensates