Three-Body Recombination of Identical Bosons with a Large Positive Scattering Length at Nonzero Temperature

Abstract

For identical bosons with a large scattering length, the dependence of the 3-body recombination rate on the collision energy is determined in the zero-range limit by universal functions of a single scaling variable. There are six scaling functions for angular momentum zero and one scaling function for each higher partial wave. We calculate these universal functions by solving the Skorniakov--Ter-Martirosian equation. The results for the 3-body recombination as a function of the collision energy are in good agreement with previous results from solving the 3-body Schroedinger equation for 4He atoms. The universal scaling functions can be used to calculate the 3-body recombination rate at nonzero temperature. We obtain an excellent fit to the data from the Innsbruck group for 133Cs atoms with a large positive scattering length.