Influence of the energy-band structure on ultracold reactive processes in lattices

H. Terrier, J.-M. Launay, and A. Simoni

Phys. Rev. A 93, 032703 – Published 4 March 2016

Abstract

We study theoretically ultracold collisions in quasi-one-dimensional optical traps for bosonic and fermionic reactive molecules in the presence of a periodic potential along the trap axis. Elastic, reactive, and umklapp processes due to nonconservation of the center-of-mass motion are investigated for parameters of relevant experimental interest. The model naturally keeps into account the effect of excited energy bands and is particularly suited for being adapted to rigorous close-coupled calculations. Our formalism shows that a correct derivation of the parameters in tight-binding effective models must include the strong momentum dependence of the coupling constant we predict even for deep lattices.