Universality in Ionic Three-Body Systems Near an Ion-Atom Feshbach Resonance.

We calculate the bound and scattering properties of a system of two neutral atoms and an ion near an ion-atom Feshbach resonance. Our results indicate that long-range ion-atom interactions lead to significant deviations from universal behavior derived from contact or van der Waals potentials. We find that ionic systems display an overall suppression of inelastic transitions leading to recombination rates and lifetimes of Efimov state orders of magnitude larger with respect to those for neutral atoms. We further characterize the dense spectra of triatomic molecular ions with extended lifetimes. Our results provide a deeper insight into the universality and structure of three-body ionic systems and establish them as a promising platform for exploring novel few- and many-body phenomena with long-range interactions.