Cold three-body recombination in helium-helium-silver-atom collisions using the hybrid slow-variable-discretization–adiabatic hyperspherical R -matrix approach

We study three-body recombination in the helium-helium-silver system at cold collision energies. The three-body Schr\"odinger equation is solved combining the slow variable discretization and adiabatic approaches with the R-matrix propagation method, in order to calculate the product-state-selective total and partial recombination rates in the ⁴He+⁴He + Ag system. Recombination at collision energies less than 10 mK is found to take place dominantly to the product molecule ⁴HeAg in its least bound state, while the three atoms recombine mainly to the ⁴He₂ molecule in its ground state at higher collision energies.