Fig. 4: Elastic scattering.
a, The grey data points show the thermalization rate Γth normalized by the mean in situ density n as a function of the microwave detuning Δ at an ellipticity angle ξ = 19(2)° and a Rabi frequency Ω ≈ 2π × 10 MHz. The temperature is 230 nK. The error bars are the standard error of the mean of 7 to 16 repetitions. For comparison, the solid blue line shows the corresponding theory calculation of the elastic collision rate coefficient βel. The uncertainty of ξ is taken into account by the shaded area. The dashed line is the Born approximation of the background collision rate coefficient, which holds for detunings Δ ≳ 2π × 8 MHz (Methods). The insets show the normalized linear density \(\widetilde{n}\) along the lattice axis averaged over ten repetitions as a function of the molecule velocity v in the lattice direction for Δ = 2π × 10 MHz and 2π × 25 MHz. b, The coupled-channel calculations of the energy-dependent scattering length with the same microwave parameters and a fixed collision energy of kBT, with T = 230 nK. The solid (dashed) lines are the real (imaginary) part of the scattering lengths in the channel px (orange), py (blue) and pz (green). The dotted line is a fit of equation (3). The inset illustrates the partial waves of the scattering channels. kB is the Boltzmann constant.
