Efimov States of Strongly Interacting Photons

M. J. Gullans, S. Diehl, S. T. Rittenhouse, B. P. Ruzic, J. P. D’Incao, P. Julienne, A. V. Gorshkov, and J. M. Taylor
Phys. Rev. Lett. 119, 233601 – Published 4 December 2017
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Abstract

We demonstrate the emergence of universal Efimov physics for interacting photons in cold gases of Rydberg atoms. We consider the behavior of three photons injected into the gas in their propagating frame, where a paraxial approximation allows us to consider them as massive particles. In contrast to atoms and nuclei, the photons have a large anisotropy between their longitudinal mass, arising from dispersion, and their transverse mass, arising from diffraction. Nevertheless, we show that, in suitably rescaled coordinates, the effective interactions become dominated by s-wave scattering near threshold and, as a result, give rise to an Efimov effect near unitarity. We show that the three-body loss of these Efimov trimers can be strongly suppressed and determine conditions under which these states are observable in current experiments. These effects can be naturally extended to probe few-body universality beyond three bodies, as well as the role of Efimov physics in the nonequilibrium, many-body regime.

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  • Received 20 August 2017

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.119.233601

© 2017 American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Nuclear PhysicsAtomic, Molecular & Optical

Authors & Affiliations

M. J. Gullans1,2,*, S. Diehl3, S. T. Rittenhouse4, B. P. Ruzic1, J. P. D’Incao5,6, P. Julienne1, A. V. Gorshkov1,2,†, and J. M. Taylor1,2,7,‡

  • 1Joint Quantum Institute, NIST and University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742, USA
  • 2Joint Center for Quantum Information and Computer Science, NIST and University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742, USA
  • 3Institut für Theoretische Physik, Universität zu Köln, D-50937 Cologne, Germany
  • 4Department of Physics, The United States Naval Academy, Annapolis, Maryland 21402, USA
  • 5JILA, University of Colorado and NIST, Boulder, Colorado 80309, USA
  • 6Department of Physics, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado 80309, USA
  • 7Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology (RCAST), The University of Tokyo, Meguro-ku, Tokyo, 153-8904, Japan

  • *Present address: Department of Physics, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA. mgullans@princeton.edu
  • gorshkov@umd.edu
  • jmtaylor@jqi.umd.edu

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Issue

Vol. 119, Iss. 23 — 8 December 2017

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