Random Matrix Theory Analysis of a Temperature-Related Transformation in Statistics of Fano–Feshbach Resonances in Thulium Atoms

Abstract

Recently, the transformation from random to chaotic behavior in the statistics of Fano–Feshbach resonances was observed in thulium atoms with rising ensemble temperature. We performed random matrix theory simulations of such spectra and analyzed the resulting statistics in an attempt to understand the mechanism of the transformation. Our simulations show that, when evaluated in terms of the Brody parameter, resonance statistics do not change or change insignificantly when higher temperature resonances are appended to the statistics. In the experiments evaluated, temperature was changed simultaneously with optical dipole trap depth. Thus, simulations included the Stark shift based on the known polarizability of the free atoms and assuming their polarizability remains the same in the bound state. Somewhat surprisingly, we found that, while including the Stark shift does lead to minor statistical changes, it does not change the resonance statistics and, therefore, is not responsible for the experimentally observed statistic transformation. This observation suggests that either our assumption regarding the polarizability of Feshbach molecules is poor or that an additional mechanism changes the statistics and leads to more chaotic statistical behavior.