Atomic and molecular samples reduced to temperatures below one microkelvin, yet still in the gas phase, afford unprecedented energy resolution in probing and manipulating the interactions between their constituent particles. As a result of this resolution, atoms can be made to scatter resonantly on demand, through the precise control of a magnetic field. For simple atoms, such as alkalis, scattering resonances are extremely well characterized. However, ultracold physics is now poised to enter a new regime, where much more complex species can be cooled and studied, including magnetic lanthanide atoms and even molecules. For molecules, it has been speculated that a dense set of resonances in ultracold collision cross-sections will probably exhibit essentially random fluctuations, much as the observed energy spectra of nuclear scattering do. According to the Bohigas-Giannoni-Schmit conjecture, such fluctuations would imply chaotic dynamics of the underlying classical motion driving the collision. This would necessitate new ways of looking at the fundamental interactions in ultracold atomic and molecular systems, as well as perhaps new chaos-driven states of ultracold matter. Here we describe the experimental demonstration that random spectra are indeed found at ultralow temperatures. In the experiment, an ultracold gas of erbium atoms is shown to exhibit many Fano-Feshbach resonances, of the order of three per gauss for bosons. Analysis of their statistics verifies that their distribution of nearest-neighbour spacings is what one would expect from random matrix theory. The density and statistics of these resonances are explained by fully quantum mechanical scattering calculations that locate their origin in the anisotropy of the atoms' potential energy surface. Our results therefore reveal chaotic behaviour in the native interaction between ultracold atoms.

We show that for ultracold magnetic lanthanide atoms chaotic scattering emerges due to a combination of anisotropic interaction potentials and Zeeman coupling under an external magnetic field. This scattering is studied in a collaborative experimental and theoretical effort for both dysprosium and erbium. We present extensive atom-loss measurements of their dense magnetic Feshbach-resonance spectra, analyze their statistical properties, and compare to predictions from a random-matrix-theory-inspired model. Furthermore, theoretical coupled-channels simulations of the anisotropic molecular Hamiltonian at zero magnetic field show that weakly bound, near threshold diatomic levels form overlapping, uncoupled chaotic series that when combined are randomly distributed. The Zeeman interaction shifts and couples these levels, leading to a Feshbach spectrum of zero-energy bound states with nearest-neighbor spacings that changes from randomly to chaotically distributed for increasing magnetic field. Finally, we show that the extreme temperature sensitivity of a small, but sizable fraction of the resonances in the Dy and Er atom-loss spectra is due to resonant nonzero partial-wave collisions. Our threshold analysis for these resonances indicates a large collision-energy dependence of the three-body recombination rate.

A fundamental question in the study of chemical reactions is how reactions proceed at a collision energy close to absolute zero. This question is no longer hypothetical: quantum degenerate gases of atoms and molecules can now be created at temperatures lower than a few tens of nanokelvin. Here we consider the benchmark ultracold reaction between, the most-celebrated ultracold molecule, KRb and K. We map out an accurate ab initio ground-state potential energy surface of the K2Rb complex in full dimensionality and report numerically-exact quantum-mechanical reaction dynamics. The distribution of rotationally resolved rates is shown to be Poissonian. An analysis of the hyperspherical adiabatic potential curves explains this statistical character revealing a chaotic distribution for the short-range collision complex that plays a key role in governing the reaction outcome.

We report on the realization of an ultracold mixture of lithium atoms in the ground state and ytterbium atoms in an excited metastable ( 3 P2) state. Such a mixture can support broad magnetic Feshbach resonances which may be utilized for the production of ultracold molecules with an electronic spin degree of freedom, as well as novel Efimov trimers. We investigate the interaction properties of the mixture in the presence of an external magnetic field and find an upper limit for the background interspecies two-body inelastic decay coefficient of K ′ 2 < 3 × 10 −12 cm 3 /s for the 3 P2 mJ = −1 substate. We calculate the dynamic polarizabilities of the Yb( 3 P2) magnetic substates for a range of wavelengths, and find good agreement with our measurements at 1064 nm. Our calculations also allow the identification of magic frequencies where Yb ground and metastable states are identically trapped and the determination of the interspecies van der Waals coefficients.Ultracold elemental mixtures provide unique opportunities to study few-and many-body physics with mass-mismatched atomic partners [1] and diatomic polar molecules [2, 3]. While the bulk of elemental mixture experiments have been performed using ground-state bialkali systems, the recent production of ground state mixtures of alkali and alkaline-earth-like atoms [4][5][6][7] further extend the experimental possibilities. These include powerful quantum simulation and information protocols [8] and tests of fundamental symmetries [9] with paramagnetic polar molecules. While tunable two-body interactions that are important for these advances have been proposed in such mixtures [10], they have not yet been experimentally detected.In this Letter we report the realization a new class of heteronuclear mixtures in which one atomic component is in an electronically excited state, using lithium ( 6 Li) and ytterbium ( 174 Yb) atoms. This establishes a highly mass-mismatched atomic mixture where tunable anisotropic interactions are expected to play a strong role [11], laying a foundation for future studies of ultracold trapped paramagnetic polar molecules and Efimov trimers with very large mass imbalance [12]. We measure inelastic interactions in the mixture and observe the relative suppression of interspecies inelastic processes. Our experimental methods also demonstrate new techniques of production and manipulation of spin components in the metastable 3 P 2 state of Yb.The study and control of anisotropic interactions is an increasingly important topic in ultracold atomic systems. In addition to their impact on many-body physics [3,8,13], anisotropic two-body interactions are proving to be of great interest for generating magnetically tunable interactions, as has been calculated theoretically [14] and observed experimentally in a mixture of ground and excited state Yb atoms [15]. The latter result applied in the context of the Li+Yb combination points to an alternative route towards tunable interactions, where the ground

A first principles study of the dynamics of 6 Li( 2 S)+ 6 Li 174 Yb( 2 Σ + )→ 6 Li2( 1 Σ + )+ 174 Yb( 1 S) reaction is presented at cold and ultracold temperatures. The computations involve determination and analytic fitting of a three-dimensional potential energy surface for the Li2Yb system and quantum dynamics calculations of varying complexities, ranging from exact quantum dynamics within the close-coupling scheme, to statistical quantum treatment, and universal models. It is demonstrated that the two simplified methods yield zero-temperature limiting reaction rate coefficients in reasonable agreement with the full close-coupling calculations. The effect of the three-body term in the interaction potential is explored by comparing quantum dynamics results from a pairwise potential that neglects the three-body term to that derived from the full interaction potential. Inclusion of the three-body term in the close-coupling calculations was found to reduce the limiting rate coefficients by a factor of two. The reaction exoergicity populates vibrational levels as high as v = 19 of the 6 Li2 molecule in the limit of zero collision energy. Product vibrational distributions from the close-coupling calculations reveal sensitivity to inclusion of three-body forces in the interaction potential. Overall, the results indicate that a simplified model based on the long-range potential is able to yield reliable values of the total reaction rate coefficient in the ultracold limit but a more rigorous approach based on statistical quantum or quantum close-coupling methods is desirable when product rovibrational distribution is required.