Stable heteronuclear few-atom bound states in mixed dimensions

Abstract

We study few-body problems in mixed dimensions where two or three heavy atoms are trapped individually in parallel one-dimensional tubes or two-dimensional disks and a single light atom travels freely in three dimensions. Using the Born-Oppenheimer approximation, we find three- and four-body bound states for a broad parameter region. Specifically, the existence of trimer and tetramer states persists to the negative scattering length regime, where no two-body bound state is present. As pointed out by Y. Nishida in an earlier work [Phys. Rev. A 82, 011605(R) (2010)], these few-body bound states are stable against three-body recombination due to geometric separation. In addition, we find that the binding energy of the ground trimer and tetramer state reaches its maximum value when the scattering lengths are comparable to the separation between the low-dimensional traps.