Charge transfer in ultracold gases via Feshbach resonances

We investigate the prospects of using magnetic Feshbach resonance to control charge exchange in ultracold collisions of heteroisotopic combinations of atoms and ions of the same element. The proposed treatment, readily applicable to alkali or alkaline-earth metals, is illustrated on cold collisions of Be+9 and Be10. Feshbach resonances are characterized by quantum scattering calculations in a coupled-channel formalism that includes non-Born-Oppenheimer terms originating from the nuclear kinetic operator. Near a resonance predicted at 322 G, we find the charge exchange rate coefficient to rise from practically zero to values greater than 10-12cm3/s. Our results suggest controllable charge exchange processes between different isotopes of suitable atom-ion pairs, with potential applications to quantum systems engineered to study charge diffusion in trapped cold atom-ion mixtures and emulate many-body physics.