Ultracold Ion-Atom Scattering

Abstract

The study of the physics of controllable and isolated systems with long range binary interactions is of great importance for understanding complex systems and their interactions with environments, in the quantum regime. Hybrid ion-atom systems have allowed the studies of the nature of binary interactions in dilute systems in regimes where semi-classical formalism is adequate to explain the results [1-4]. Despite the challenge of using ions, which apply repulsive forces on each other and are highly sensitive to any electromagnetic fields, in the presence of cold atoms, stabilization, thermalization and cooling has been shown [5-11]. This process of cooling has been shown to not work until the ions attain temperatures as low as the ultracold atoms, due to limitations arising from the mechanism of trapping the ions. However, both theoretical studies computing observable phenomena at ultracold temperatures and experimental efforts to enable measurement of these phenomena are being actively pursued.