Coupled-channels method for the scattering hypervolume in ultracold atomic three-body collisions

Abstract

We introduce a novel coupled-channels method for elastic three-body scattering in systems of identical bosonic alkali-metal atoms. The approach relies on the numerically exact two-body off-the-energy-shell transition matrix, constructed from realistic multichannel molecular interaction potentials that support many bound states. By rigorously accounting for this off-shell structure, the method captures both the short-range physics as well as multichannel couplings characteristic of alkali-metal potentials without resorting to model pseudopotentials. The central output is the complex three-body scattering hypervolume -- the three-body analogue of the two-body scattering length -- which we obtain with controlled and verifiable numerical accuracy. As a realistic benchmark, we apply our framework to spin-polarized potassium-39, performing full coupled-channels three-body scattering calculations and extracting the hypervolume over experimentally relevant conditions. The method is general and transferable to other atomic species and interaction models featuring deep molecular potentials with an arbitrarily large number of bound states.