Universality and scaling limit of weakly-bound tetramers

Abstract

The occurrence of a new limit cycle in few-body physics, expressing a universal scaling function relating the binding energies of two successive tetramer states, is revealed by considering a renormalized zero-range two-body interaction in bound state of four identical bosons. The tetramer energy spectrum is obtained by adding a boson to an Efimov bound state with energy B3 in the unitary limit (for zero two-body binding energy or infinite two-body scattering length). Each excited Nth tetramer energy B(N)4 is shown to slide along a scaling function as a short-range four-body scale is changed, emerging from the 3+1 threshold for a universal ratio B4(N)/B3 = 4.6, which does not depend on N. The new scale can also be revealed by a resonance in the atom-trimer recombination process.