Three-body losses of a polarized Fermi gas near a p-wave Feshbach resonance in effective field theory

Abstract

We study three-body recombination of fully spin-polarized ${}^6$Li atoms that are interacting resonantly in relative p-waves. Motivated by a recent experiment, we focus on negative scattering volumes where three atoms recombine into a deep dimer and another atom. We calculate the three-body recombination rate using a Faddeev equation derived from effective field theory. In particular, we study the magnetic field and temperature dependences of the loss rate and use the recombination data to determine the effective range of the p-wave atom-atom interaction. We also predict the existence of a shallow three-body bound state that manifests itself as a prominent feature in the energy-dependent three-body recombination rate.