Induced two-body scattering resonances from a square-well potential with oscillating depth

Abstract

In systems of ultracold atoms, pairwise interactions can be resonantly enhanced by a new mechanism which does not rely upon a magnetic Feshbach resonance. In this mechanism, interactions are controlled by tuning the frequency of an oscillating parallel component of the magnetic field close to the Bohr frequency for the transition to a two-atom bound state. The real part of the s-wave scattering length a has a resonance as a function of the oscillation frequency near the Bohr frequency. The resonance parameters can be controlled by varying the amplitude of the oscillating field. The amplitude also controls the imaginary part of a which arises predominantly because the oscillating field converts atom pairs into molecules. For the case of a shallow bound state in the scattering channel, the dimensionless resonance parameters are universal functions of the dimensionless oscillation amplitude.