This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5). Public software and an appropriate user-friendly interface will be developed and released for performing accurate quantum mechanical calculations of fundamental three-body processes. This new computational tool will permit scientists from many different fields to study reactions and internal structure of quantum three-body systems important to molecular, chemical, and nuclear physics on the basis of user-provided interactions. The software will use existing effective and reliable codes for solving Faddeev equations in configuration space. The computational procedure has been carefully tested in calculations of extremely sensitive helium-3 bound states, and of helium on helium-2 scattering processes, with excellent performance. It is fast, straightforward and does not involve manual fine-tuning, in contrast to other methods.
Several emerging areas of physics and astronomy are dependent on reliable and accurate theoretical models of few-body interactions. Few-body processes play a central role in myriad areas of physics and astronomy, including telecommunications, atmospheric, environmental and energy sciences. Examples of recent importance include collective phenomena in dilute, ultra-cold atomic gases, structural properties of van der Waals clusters, and precision measurements of trapped ensembles of atoms or molecules. The software and interface resulting from this research will also provide an ideal learning environment for undergraduate and graduate students studying the implications of the rules of quantum mechanics for both real and model systems. Accordingly, it will contribute to the education of both students and researchers in a variety of areas of modern science.
