Efimov physics in atom-dimer scattering of Li-6 atoms

Journal article, 2010

Li-6 atoms in the three lowest hyperfine states display universal properties when the S-wave scattering length between each pair of states is large. Recent experiments reported four pronounced features arising from Efimov physics in the atom-dimer relaxation rate, namely two resonances and two local minima. We use the universal effective-field theory to calculate the atom-dimer relaxation rate at zero temperature. Our results describe the four features qualitatively and imply there is a hidden local minimum. In the vicinity of the resonance at 685 G, we perform a finite temperature calculation which improves the agreement of theory and experiment. We conclude that finite temperature effects cannot be neglected in the analysis of the experimental data.