Three body recombination of ultracold dipoles to weakly bound dimers

Abstract

We use universality in two-body dipolar physics to study three-body recombination. We present results for the universal structure of weakly bound two-dipole states that depend only on the s-wave scattering length ($a$). We study threshold three-body recombination rates into weakly-bound dimer states as a function of the scattering length. A Fermi Golden rule analysis is used to estimate rates for different events mediated by the dipole-dipole interaction and a phenomenological contact interaction. The three-body recombination rate in the limit where $a\gg D$ contains terms which scale as $a^{4}$, $a^{2}D^{2}$ and $D^{4}$, where $D$ is the dipolar length. When $a \ll D$, the three-boby recombination rate scales as $D^4$.