• Accepted Paper

Scattering and bound states of two heteronuclear ultracold atoms in a quasi-two-dimensional confinement

Binhao Wang, Fan Yang, and Peng Zhang

Phys. Rev. A - Accepted 21 September, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/ljsm-6cd9

Abstract

We solve the two-body problem of ultracold heteronuclear atoms in a quasi-two-dimensional (quasi-2D) geometry. The quasi-2D confinement is realized by a harmonic trap along the longitudinal (z-) direction, with different trap frequencies for the two atoms, as in many current experiments on ultracold heteronuclear gases. As a consequence, the longitudinal center-of-mass (CoM) motion is coupled to the relative motion, which significantly complicates the two-body problem. We solve this problem exactly and derive the 2D scattering length a2D, the 2D effective range parameter R2D, and the bound-state energies, as functions of the s-wave scattering length and effective range of the two atoms in free three-dimensional (3D) space. We show that multiple 2D scattering resonances can be induced by the coupling between the longitudinal CoM and relative motion. Around these resonances, a2D varies rapidly with the 3D scattering parameters, while R2D is strongly enhanced. Since the effective pairwise interaction in quasi-2D ultracold gases is determined by the two-body scattering amplitudes and bound-state energies, our results can be used for manipulating the effective 2D interatomic interaction in quasi-2D ultracold heteronuclear gases by tuning the confinement frequencies and the 3D scattering parameters.

Export citation

Export citation

Choose format for download:

Download Citation

If the author has provided any supplemental materials with this article they will be available upon publication of the version of record.

Sign In to Your Journals Account

Filter

Filter

Article Lookup

Enter a citation