Efimov physics in the complex plane

Abstract

Efimov effect is characterized by an infinite number of three-body bound states following a universal geometric scaling law at two-body resonances. In this paper, we investigate the influence of two-body loss which can be described by a complex scattering length $a_c$ on these states. Interestingly, because of the complexity of the scattering length $a_c$, the trimer energy is no longer constrained on the negative real axis, and it is allowed to have a nonvanishing imaginary part and a real part which may exceed the three-body or the atom-dimer scattering threshold. Indeed, by taking the $^{133}$Cs-$^{133}$Cs-$^6$Li system as a concrete example, we calculate the trimer energies by solving the generalized Skorniakov-Ter-Martirosian equation and find such three-body bound states with energies that have positive real parts and obey a generalized geometric scaling law. Remarkably, we also find that in some regions these three-body bound states have longer lifetimes compared with the corresponding two-body bound states. The lifetimes for these trimer states can even tend to infinity. Our work paves the way for the future exploration of few-body bound states in the complex plane.