Van der Waals universality in homonuclear atom-dimer elastic collisions

Abstract

The universal aspects of atom-dimer elastic collisions are investigated within the framework of Faddeev equations. The two-body interactions between the neutral atoms are approximated by the separable potential approach. Our analysis considers a pure van der Waals potential tail as well as soft-core van der Waals interactions permitting us in this manner to address the universally general features of atom-dimer resonant spectra. In particular, we show that the atom-dimer resonances are solely associated with the {\it excited} Efimov states. Furthermore, the positions of the corresponding resonances for a soft-core potentials with more than 5 bound states are in good agreement with the corresponding results from an infinitely deep pure van der Waals tail potential.