Three-body recombination of ultra-cold atoms to a weakly bound s level
Abstract
We discuss three-body recombination of ultra-cold atoms to a weakly bound
s
level. In this case, characterized by large and positive scattering length
a
for pair interaction, we find a repulsive effective potential for three-body collisions, which strongly reduces the recombination probability and makes simple Jastrow-like approaches absolutely inadequate. In the zero temperature limit we obtain a universal relation, independent of the detailed shape of the interaction potential, for the (event) rate constant of three-body recombination:
α
rec
=3.9ℏ
a
4
/m
, where
m
is the atom mass.