Towards the elusive Efimov state of the ^4He_3 molecule through a new atom-optical state-selection technique

Abstract

Excited states and excitation energies of weakly bound systems, e.g. atomic few-body systems and clusters, are difficult to study experimentally. For this purpose we propose a new and very general atom-optical method which is based on inelastic diffraction from transmission gratings. The technique is applicable to the recently found helium trimer molecule ^4He_3, allowing for the first time an investigation of the possible existence of an excited trimer state and determination of its excitation energy. This would be of fundamental importance for the famous Efimov effect.

4 pages REVTEX + 4 figures. Phys. Rev. Lett. (in press)

References in corpus (3)

• Determination of Atom-Surface van der Waals Potentials from Transmission-Grating Diffraction Intensities
• The structure of the atomic helium trimers: Halos and Efimov states
• Atomic versus molecular diffraction: Influence of break-ups and finite size

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Observation of the Efimov state of the helium trimer
• Microscopic theory of atom-molecule oscillations in a Bose-Einstein condensate
• The ^4He trimer as an Efimov system
• Production of three-body Efimov molecules in an optical lattice
• Quantum interference with molecules: The role of internal states
• Matter diffraction at oblique incidence: Higher resolution and the Helium Trimer Efimov state
• Inelastic Diffraction and Spectroscopy of Very Weakly Bound Clusters