Abstract
It is shown that the single-particle spin-orbit coupling terms, which—in the cold atom context—are associated with synthetic gauge fields, can significantly and nontrivially modify the phase accumulation at small interparticle distances even if the length scale associated with the spin-orbit coupling term is significantly larger than the van der Waals length that characterizes the two-body interaction potential. A theoretical framework, which utilizes a generalized local frame transformation and accounts for the phase accumulation analytically, is developed. Comparison with numerical coupled-channel calculations demonstrates that the phase accumulation can, to a very good approximation, be described over a wide range of energies by the free-space scattering phase shifts—evaluated at a scattering energy that depends on —and the spin-orbit coupling strength .
- Received 15 December 2016
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.95.020702
©2017 American Physical Society