Efimov states near a Feshbach resonance

Abstract

We describe three-body collisions close to a Feshbach resonance by taking into account two-body scattering processes involving both the open and the closed channel. We extract the atom-dimer scattering length and the three-body recombination rate, predicting the existence at negative scattering length of a sharp minimum in the recombination losses due to the presence of a shallow bound level. We obtain very good agreement with the experimental results in atomic 133Cs of Kraemer et al. [Nature 440, 315 (2006)], and predict the position of Efimov resonances in a gas of 39K atoms.