Long-lived trimers in a quasi-two-dimensional Fermi system

© 2018 American Physical Society. We consider the problem of three distinguishable fermions confined to a quasi-two-dimensional (quasi-2D) geometry, where there is a strong harmonic potential in one direction. We go beyond previous theoretical work and investigate the three-body bound states (trimers) for the case where the two-body short-range interactions between fermions are unequal. Using the scattering parameters from experiments on ultracold Li6 atoms, we calculate the trimer spectrum throughout the crossover from two to three dimensions. We find that the deepest Efimov trimer in the Li6 system is unaffected by realistic quasi-2D confinements, while the first excited trimer smoothly evolves from a three-dimensional-like Efimov trimer to an extended 2D-like trimer as the attractive interactions are decreased. We furthermore compute the excited trimer wave function and quantify the stability of the trimer against decay into a dimer and an atom by determining the probability that three fermions approach each other at short distances. Our results indicate that the lifetime of the trimer can be enhanced by at least an order of magnitude in the quasi-2D geometry, thus opening the door to realizing long-lived trimers in three-component Fermi gases.