• Accepted Paper

Identical-particle symmetry-enabled complete coherent control of ultracold atomic and molecular collisions

Jing-Chen Zhang, Adrien Devolder, Timur V. Tscherbul, Paul Brumer, and Yu Liu

Phys. Rev. A - Accepted 15 September, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/1mcm-jmnx

Abstract

We show that exchange symmetry in collisions of identical particles enables symmetry-protected coherent control of the total scattering cross section. For identical fermions, antisymmetrization enforces a common control phase among contributing channels within a given parity sector, yielding maximal control visibility. For identical bosons, phase-locking persists but with reduced visibility due to additional exchange (satellite) contributions. Collisions of distinguishable particles lack this symmetry-imposed phase-locking, leading to lower controllability and visibility. We elucidate these principles through coupled-channel quantum-scattering calculations for lithium–lithium collisions, comparing the 6Li6Li (identical fermions), 7Li7Li (identical bosons), and 6Li7Li (distinguishable) systems. Furthermore, in the identical-particle cases, symmetry-enforced phase-locking enables full control over the parity of the final state even beyond the ultracold regime. This mechanism is broadly applicable to identical-particle collisions, including homonuclear molecules for which established approaches—DC electric fields or microwave shielding—are ineffective or unavailable.

Export citation

Export citation

Choose format for download:

Download Citation

If the author has provided any supplemental materials with this article they will be available upon publication of the version of record.

Sign In to Your Journals Account

Filter

Filter

Article Lookup

Enter a citation