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S. Grishkevich and A. Saenz
The influence of a tight trap on photoassociation of two atoms is discussed. For this purpose realistic interatomic interaction potentials are used. Besides the influence of the trapping potential itself the investigation considers also the importance of the interatomic interaction potential. It is found that not only the magnitude of the absolute value of the scattering length leads to a strong variation of the photoassociation rate, but also the sign can play an important role. In fact, the interaction strength can be used as a control parameter. Using the results obtained with realistic interaction potentials, the validity of the pseudopotential approximation for predicting photoassociation rates is discussed. Since very tight traps are usually experimentally realized by optical lattices, the work is presently extended to incorporate the effects of the anharmonicity of such trapping potentials, including the coupling of relative and center-of-mass motion. |
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