Universalities in ultracold reactions of alkali-metal polar molecules

Abstract

We consider ultracold collisions of ground-state heteronuclear alkali-metal dimers that are susceptible to four-center chemical reactions 2AB→A 2+B2 even at submicrokelvin temperatures. These reactions depend strongly on species, temperature, electric field, and confinement in an optical lattice. We calculate ab initio van der Waals coefficients for these interactions and use a quantum formalism to study the scattering properties of such molecules under an external electric field and optical lattice. We also apply a quantum threshold model to explore the dependence of reaction rates on the various parameters. We find that, among the heteronuclear alkali-metal fermionic species, LiNa is the least reactive, whereas LiCs is the most reactive. For the bosonic species, LiK is the most reactive in zero field, but all species considered, LiNa, LiK, LiRb, LiCs, and KRb, share a universal reaction rate once a sufficiently high electric field is applied. For indistinguishable bosons, the inelastic/reactive rate increases as d2 in the quantum regime, where d is the dipole moment induced by the electric field. This is a weaker power-law dependence than for indistinguishable fermions, for which the rate behaves as d6. © 2011 American Physical Society.