Mass Dependence of Ultracold Three-Body Collision Rates

Abstract

We show that many aspects of ultracold three-body collisions can be controlled by choosing the mass ratio between the collision partners. In the ultracold regime, the scattering length dependence of the three-body rates can be substantially modified from the equal mass results. We demonstrate that the only non-trivial mass dependence is due solely to Efimov physics. We have determined the mass dependence of the three-body collision rates for all heteronuclear systems relevant for two-component atomic gases with resonant s-wave interspecies interactions, which includes only three-body systems with two identical bosons or two identical fermions.