State-to-state chemistry for three-body recombination in an ultracold rubidium gas

Abstract

Tracking a trio of rubidium atoms Crossed molecular beams have provided decades' worth of knowledge into how quantum mechanics governs chemical reactivity. Nonetheless, the technique is generally limited to the collision of two partners. Wolf et al. report on a three-body process with full quantum state resolution. By cooling rubidium atoms to ultralow temperatures in an optical trap, they were able to observe dimer formation, stabilized by collision with a third atom, and extract the precise dependence of product states on the initial states of the atoms involved. Science , this issue p. 921