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Three-body recombination at large scattering lengths in an ultracold atomic gas

Tino Weber·Jens Herbig·Michael Mark·Hanns-Christoph Naegerl·Rudolf Grimm
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Abstract

We study three-body recombination in an optically trapped ultracold gas of cesium atoms with precise magnetic control of the s-wave scattering length a. At large positive values of a, we measure the dependence of the rate coefficient on a and confirm the theoretically predicted scaling proportional to a^4. Evidence of recombination heating indicates the formation of very weakly bound molecules in the last bound energy level.

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Tino Weber, Jens Herbig, Michael Mark, Hanns-Christoph Naegerl, Rudolf Grimm. 2003-07-21. Three-body recombination at large scattering lengths in an ultracold atomic gas. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.91.123201

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