Brett Esry
Chapin & University Distinguished Professor
Address:	325 Cardwell Hall
Phone:	(785) 532-1620
E-mail:	esry@phys.ksu.edu
Personal Webpage
Ph.D. University of Colorado, 1997
B.S. Kansas State University, 1993

Research Area

Atomic, Molecular & Optical Physics

One of my main efforts is studying ultracold ~nK to µK) atomic systems. Within this increasingly broad area, my group is studying three-body collisions as well as matter wave propagation through microfabricated waveguides. Neither topic has received much attention until recently, and our group is one of only a few in the world capable of carrying out the three-body collision calculations.

One of the collision processes we are interested in produces a molecule from three free atoms (three-body recombination) and is a significant loss mechanism for experiments on degenerate quantum gases. These experiments aim at understanding phenomena such as superfluidity and superconductivity, and three-body recombination must be characterized in order to interpret the experiments. In the past year, we have investigated the limits of low-energy approximations to the recombination rates. We have also looked into the other three-body processes that can occur in the experiments --- collision induced vibrational relaxation and collision induced dissociation. We found their low-energy expansion and their dependence on the scattering parameters.

Another main thrust of my work is understanding the dynamics of a molecule in an intense laser field. My group is working on ways to solve the time-dependent Schrödinger equation for this highly non-perturbative system. Even the simplest molecule H2+, however, requires the solution of a six-dimensional time-dependent equation --- a nontrivial job for even the biggest supercomputers. We have explored various approximation schemes on our way to a complete solution.

Research Support

• Department of Energy
• National Science Foundation

Recent Selected Publications

• Confinement potentials and ultracold atom trapping in atom chips: a numerical approach, J.A. Lopez-Miranda, R. Cabrera-Trujillo, M.W.J. Bromley, and B.D. E, J. Phys.: Conf. Proc. (accepted) (2009).
• Vibrationally-cold CO²⁺ in intense ultrashort laser pulses, J. McKenna, A.M. Sayler, F. Anis, N.G. Johnson, B. Gaire, U. Lev, M.A. Zohrabi, K.D. Carnes, B.D. Esry, and I. Ben-Itzhak, Phys. Rev. A 81, 061401 (2010).
• Colliding Bose-Einstein condensates to observe Efimov physics, Y. Wang, J.P. D'Incao, H.-C. Naegerl, and B.D. Esry, Phys. Rev. Lett. 104, 113201 (2009).
• Tracing the photodissociation probability of H₂⁺ in intense fields using chirped laser pulses, V.S. Prabhudesai, U. Lev, A. Natan, B.D. Bruner, A. Diner, O. Heber, D. Strasser, D. Schwalm, I. Ben-Itzhak, J.J. Hua, B.D. Esry, Y. Silberberg, and D. Zajfman, Phys. Rev. A 81, 023401 (2009).
• Magnetically controlled exchange process in an ultracold atom-dimer mixture, S. Knoop, F. Ferlaino, M. Berninger, M. Mark, H.-C. Naegerl, R. Grimm, J.P. D'Incao, and B.D. Esry, Phys. Rev. Lett. 104, 053201 (2010).

full publication list