Pseudopotentials for an ultracold dipolar gas

A gas of ultracold molecules interacting via the long-range dipolar potential offers a highly controlled environment in which to study strongly correlated phases. However, at particle coalescence the divergent 1/r(3) dipolar potential and associated pathological wave function hinder computational analysis. For a dipolar gas constrained to two dimensions we overcome these numerical difficulties by proposing a pseudopotential that is explicitly smooth at particle coalescence, resulting in a 2000-times speedup in diffusion Monte Carlo calculations. The pseudopotential delivers the scattering phase shifts of the dipolar interaction with an accuracy of 10(-5) and predicts the energy of a dipolar gas to an accuracy of 10(-4) E-F in a diffusion Monte Carlo calculation.