Identical-Particle Symmetry-Enabled Complete Coherent Control of Ultracold Atomic and Molecular Collisions
Abstract
We show that exchange symmetry in collisions of identical particles enables symmetry-protected coherent control of the total scattering cross section. For identical fermions, antisymmetrization enforces a common control phase among contributing channels within a given parity sector, yielding maximal control visibility. For identical bosons, phase-locking persists but with reduced visibility due to additional exchange (satellite) contributions. Collisions of distinguishable particles lack this symmetry-imposed phase-locking, leading to lower controllability and visibility. We elucidate these principles through coupled-channel quantum-scattering calculations for lithium-lithium collisions, comparing the 6Li−6Li (identical fermions), 7Li−7Li (identical bosons), and 6Li−7Li (distinguishable) systems. Furthermore, in the identical-particle cases, symmetry-enforced phase-locking enables full control over the parity of the final state even beyond the ultracold regime. This mechanism is broadly applicable to identical-particle collisions, including homonuclear molecules for which established approaches--DC electric fields or microwave shielding--are ineffective or unavailable.
Related
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BibTeX
@misc{zhang2026identicalparticle,
title = {{Identical-Particle Symmetry-Enabled Complete Coherent Control of Ultracold Atomic and Molecular Collisions}},
author = {Jing-Chen Zhang and Adrien Devolder and Timur V. Tscherbul and Paul Brumer and Yu Liu},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2607.01620},
eprint = {2607.01620},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.01620},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Identical-Particle Symmetry-Enabled Complete Coherent Control of Ultracold Atomic and Molecular Collisions
AU - Jing-Chen Zhang
AU - Adrien Devolder
AU - Timur V. Tscherbul
AU - Paul Brumer
AU - Yu Liu
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/16
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2607.01620
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.01620
AB - We show that exchange symmetry in collisions of identical particles enables symmetry-protected coherent control of the total scattering cross section. For identical fermions, antisymmetrization enforces a common control phase among contributing channels within a given parity sector, yielding maximal control visibility. For identical bosons, phase-locking persists but with reduced visibility due to additional exchange (satellite) contributions. Collisions of distinguishable particles lack this symmetry-imposed phase-locking, leading to lower controllability and visibility. We elucidate these principles through coupled-channel quantum-scattering calculations for lithium-lithium collisions, comparing the ^6Li−^6Li (identical fermions), ^7Li−^7Li (identical bosons), and ^6Li−^7Li (distinguishable) systems. Furthermore, in the identical-particle cases, symmetry-enforced phase-locking enables full control over the parity of the final state even beyond the ultracold regime. This mechanism is broadly applicable to identical-particle collisions, including homonuclear molecules for which established approaches--DC electric fields or microwave shielding--are ineffective or unavailable.
ER -