Efimov Physics and Connections to Nuclear Physics

Abstract

Physical systems characterized by a shallow two-body bound or virtual state are governed at large distances by a continuous-scale invariance, which is broken to a discrete one when three or more particles come into play. This symmetry induces a universal behavior for different systems, independent of the details of the underlying interaction, rooted in the smallness of the ratio $\ell /a_B\ll 1$, where the length $a_B$ is associated to the binding energy of the two-body system $E_2={\hslash }^2/m{a}_B^2$ and $\ell$ is the natural length given by the interaction range. Efimov physics refers to this universal behavior, which is often hidden by the on-set of system-specific non-universal effects. In this work we identify universal properties by providing an explicit link of physical systems to their unitary limit, in which $a_B\to \infty$, and show that nuclear systems belong to this class of universality.

Comments: 27 pages, 8 figures