Four-body system of 4He atoms: Dimer-dimer scattering

The strong short-range repulsion, characteristic to realistic interatomic potentials, complicates the description of weakly bound few-body systems such as those of 4He atoms. The present work proposes an approach for solving this problem and applies it to a realistic system of four 4He atoms. The potential is gradually softened such that rigorous four-body equations for bound and scattering states can be accurately solved in the momentum-space framework, and the results are extrapolated back to the limit of the original potential. Linear correlations between three- and four-body quantities are observed, and the accuracy of the procedure is improved by extrapolating in one of the three-body quantities. Results for the 4He tetramer ground-state and excited-state binding energies and atom-trimer scattering agree well with at least some of earlier determinations and shed light on the existing disagreements. An additional case of the Phillips correlation line is established for the dimer-dimer scattering length. The trimer production rate via the ultracold two-dimer collisions is estimated; it exhibits significant finite-range effects despite the weak binding of the dimer.