Charge transfer in ultracold gases via Feshbach resonances

Abstract

We investigate the prospects of controlling charge-exchange in ultracold collisions of heteroisotopic combinations of atoms and ions of the same element. The treatment, readily applicable to alkali or alkanine-earth metals, is illustrated in the process $^9$Be$^{+}$ + $^{10}$Be $\leftrightarrow$ $^{9}$Be + $^{10}$Be$^{+}$, which exhibits favorable electronic, nuclear, and hyperfine structure. Feshbach resonances are obtained from quantum scattering calculations in a standard coupled-channel formalism with non-BO terms originating from the nuclear kinetic operator. Near a narrow resonance predicted at 322 G, we find the charge-exchange rate coefficient to rise from practically zero to values larger than $10^{-12}$ cm$^3$/s. Our results suggest controllable charge-exchange reactions between different isotopes of suitable atom-ion pairs with potential applications to quantum systems engineered to study charge diffusion in trapped cold atom-ion mixtures and emulate many-body physics.