Effective-range approximations for resonant scattering of cold atoms

Studies of cold atom collisions and few-body interactions often require the energy dependence of the scattering phase shift, which is usually expressed in terms of an effective-range expansion. We use accurate coupled-channel calculations on Li-6, K-39, and Cs-133 to explore the behavior of the effective range in the vicinity of both broad and narrow Feshbach resonances. We show that commonly used expressions for the effective range break down dramatically for narrow resonances and near the zero crossings of broad resonances. We present an alternative parametrization of the effective range that is accurate through both the pole and the zero crossing for both broad and narrow resonances. However, the effective-range expansion can still fail at quite low collision energies, particularly around narrow resonances. We demonstrate that an analytical form of an energy and magnetic-field-dependent phase shift, based on multichannel quantum defect theory, gives accurate results for the energy-dependent scattering length.