Finite Energy Effects on Three-Body Collisions in Arbitrary Orbital Angular Momentum States

Three-body inelastic collisions play a crucial role in determining the stability and lifetime of trapped cold and ultracold atomic and molecular systems, as they can lead to fast atomic losses. To investigate three-body atomic losses, three identical bosons interacting via Leonard-Jones (LJ) two-body pairwise potentials are used in this theoretical study. These calculations are carried out using a novel formulation of the adiabatic hyperspherical treatment for the case of three-body systems with arbitrary total orbital angular momentum (J) and parity (π). The loss rate is calculated for the three-body recombination process, B+B+B→B₂+B, for both parity favored [π=(-1)^J] and unfavored [π=(-1)^J+1]  cases with total angular momentum ranging from J=0-6. The collision rates are calculated at energies covering both ultracold (~1nK) and cold (~1mK) regimes for different values of the two-body scattering length, chosen depending on the type of physics to be described. The finite energy effects studied in this work includes enhancements in the collision rates due to either the presence of two- or three-body resonances for a given value of J. In addition, interference effects are studied and characterized based on the structure of the adiabatic hyperspherical potential curves and avoided crossings leading to the creation of interfering reaction pathways. Other interferences and enhancements are studied by artificially changing the short-range three-body physics in order to understand the impact of three-body interactions.