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Few-body physics

Giant trimers true to scale

Nature Physics volume 5, pages 533–534 (2009)Cite this article

Quantum mechanics predicts an infinite series of loosely bound states of three bosons, and the size of these trimers should scale with a factor of 22.7. This general result seems to be confirmed now in an experiment with an ultracold gas of potassium atoms.

Quantum mechanics predicts the existence of giant few-body systems, many times larger than the characteristic length scale of the interparticle forces1. These systems can be atomic or nuclear — quantum mechanics says the mechanism responsible for the existence of such systems is universal. A striking feature of this prediction is that if you manage to spot one such giant, you can be sure that many more may exist, with all of them essentially being copies of one another zoomed in or out by a factor of (22.7)n. The first evidence for the existence of one such giant was obtained in 2006 (ref. 2), thirty-five years after the initial prediction1. Writing on page 586 of this issue, Matteo Zaccanti and colleagues3 report a further breakthrough. For the first time, evidence for two giants has been observed, and the measured scaling factor is found to be indeed close to 22.7.

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  1. Vitaly Efimov is in the Department of Physics, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195, USA. efimov@u.washington.edu,

    Vitaly Efimov

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  1. Vitaly Efimov
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Efimov, V. Giant trimers true to scale. Nature Phys 5, 533–534 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys1355

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