Three-body recombination of identical bosons with a large positive scattering length at nonzero temperature

Abstract

For identical bosons with a large scattering length, the dependence of the three-body recombination rate on the collision energy is determined in the zero-range limit by universal functions of a single scaling variable. There are six scaling functions for angular momentum zero and one scaling function for each higher partial wave. We calculate these universal functions by solving the Skorniakov-Ter-Martirosian equation. The results for the three-body recombination as a function of the collision energy are in good agreement with previous results from solving the three-body Schr\"odinger equation for $^{4}\mathrm{He}$ atoms. The universal scaling functions can be used to calculate the three-body recombination rate at nonzero temperature. We obtain an excellent fit to the data from Grimm and co-workers for $^{133}\mathrm{Cs}$ atoms with a large positive scattering length.