Hannover 2016 – scientific programme
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A: Fachverband Atomphysik
A 16: Collisions, scattering and correlation phenomena II
A 16.1: Invited Talk
Tuesday, March 1, 2016, 14:30–15:00, f142
Observation of the Efimov state of the helium trimer — •Maksim Kunitski1, Stefan Zeller1, Jörg Voigtsberger1, Anton Kalinin1, Lothar Ph. H. Schmidt1, Markus Schöffler1, Achim Czasch1, Wieland Schöllkopf2, Robert E. Grisenti1, Till Jahnke1, Dörte Blume3, and Reinhard Dörner1 — 1Institut für Kernphysik, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt/M — 2Department of Molecular Physics, Fritz-Haber-Institut, Berlin — 3Department of Physics and Astronomy, Washington State University, USA
In 1970 Vitali Efimov predicted remarkable counterintuitive behaviour of a three-body system made up of identical bosons. Namely, a weakening of pair interaction in such a system brings about in the limit appearance of infinite number of bound states of a huge spatial extent. The helium trimer has been predicted to be a molecular system having an excited state of this Efimov character under natural conditions.
Here we report experimental observation of the Efimov state of 4He3 by means of Coulomb explosion imaging of mass-selected clusters [1]. Structures of the excited Efimov state of the 4He3 are about eight times larger than those of the ground state, which is in accordance with theory. Whereas the ground state corresponds to an almost randomly distributed cloud of particles [2], the excited Efimov state is dominated by configurations in which two atoms are close to each other and the third one further away.
[1] M. Kunitski et al, Science 348, 551-555, 2015
[2] J. Voigtsberger et al, Nat. Comm. 5, 5765:1-6, 2014