Effective field theory analysis of boson-trimer bond lengths to next-to-leading order

Abstract

Cold Helium atoms are a unique system where a single excited three-body Efimov state occurs, naturally, without the need for an external magnetic field. While three-body bound state energies of cold Helium atoms have previously been investigated, recent experimental techniques have allowed their structure to also be studied. The weak interaction between Helium atoms leads to a helium-helium (dimer) scattering length, $a$, much larger than the helium-helium effective range of interaction, $r$. This feature is exploited in a theory that systematically expands observables in powers of $r/a$, known as short range effective field theory (srEFT), which has been used successfully to investigate properties of cold atom systems. Using srEFT we investigate the average bond length of atoms in the three-body ground state and excited Efimov state of cold Helium atoms. At leading-order (next-to-leading order) in srEFT, we find the average bond length of the ${}^4$He trimer ground state is 8.35(33) Å (10.29(2) Å) and the average bond length of the excited ${}^4$He trimer Efimov state is 103(4) Å (105.3(2) Å).

20 pages, 7 figures

References in corpus (9)

• Radio Frequency Association of Efimov Trimers
• Efimov Physics in Cold Atoms
• Universal properties and structure of halo nuclei
• The Three-Boson System at Next-To-Next-To-Leading Order
• Effective Field Theory for Few-Boson Systems
• Energies and radii of light nuclei around unitarity
• Three-body systems in pionless effective field theory
• Charge and Matter Form Factors of Two-Neutron Halo Nuclei in Halo Effective Field Theory at Next-to-leading-order
• The Efimov effect for heteronuclear three-body systems at positive scattering length and finite temperature

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Four-Body Systems at Large Cutoffs in Effective Field Theory