Three-body recombination in heteronuclear mixtures at finite temperature

Abstract

Within the universal zero-range theory, we compute the three-body recombination rate to deep molecular states for two identical bosons resonantly interacting with each other and with a third atom of another species, in the absence of weakly bound dimers. The results allow for a quantitative understanding of loss resonances at finite temperature and, combined with experimental data, can be used for testing the Efimov universality and extracting the corresponding three-body parameters in a given system. Curiously, we find that the loss rate can be dramatically enhanced by the resonant heavy-heavy interaction, even for large mass ratios where this interaction is practically irrelevant for the Efimov scaling factor. This effect is important for analysing the recent loss measurements in the Cs-Li mixture.