From three to four: a quantum leap in few-body physics

In 2007 and 2008 two groups of theoretical physicists (Hammer and Platter, and von Stecher, D'Incao, and Greene) predicted the existence of universal four-body states that are closely tied to Efimov trimer states. Now, a team of scientists of the Institute for Experimental Physics of the University of Innsbruck, Austria, has proven these states experimentally in an ultracold gas of caesium atoms. At particular energy separations from an Efimov state, they found two four-body loss resonances, which are a strong evidence for the existence of a pair of four-body states closely tied to Efimov trimers...

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