On the mechanism of formation of the Efimov states in the helium ^4He trimer

Abstract

A mechanism of disappearance and formation of the Efimov levels of the helium ^4He trimer is studied when the force of the interatomic interaction is changed. It is shown that these levels arise from virtual levels which are in turn formed from (quasi)resonances settled on the real axis. The resonances including virtual levels are calculated by the method based on the solution of the boundary value problem, at complex energies, for the Faddeev differential equations describing the scattering processes (2+1\to 2+1; 1+1+1). All the calculations are performed with the known interatomic Aziz He-He potential HFD-B. A very strong repulsive component of this potential at short distances between helium atoms is approximated by a hard core. A special attention is paid to the substantiation of the method used for computing resonances and to the investigation of its applicability range.