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arXiv:0806.4310 · Science

Strong Dissipation Inhibits Losses and Induces Correlations in Cold Molecular Gases

Niels Syassen, D. M. Bauer, Matthias Lettner, Thomas Volz, Daniel R. Dietze, Juan José García‐Ripoll, J. I. Cirac, Gerhard Rempe, Stephan Dürr

Published Jun 6, 2008• 437 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Atomic quantum gases in the strong-correlation regime offer unique possibilities to explore a variety of many-body quantum phenomena. Reaching this regime has usually required both strong elastic and weak inelastic interactions because the latter produce losses. We show that strong inelastic collisions can actually inhibit particle losses and drive a system into a strongly correlated regime. Studying the dynamics of ultracold molecules in an optical lattice confined to one dimension, we show that the particle loss rate is reduced by a factor of 10. Adding a lattice along the one dimension increases the reduction to a factor of 2000. Our results open the possibility to observe exotic quantum many-body phenomena with systems that suffer from strong inelastic collisions.

DOI
10.1126/science.1155309

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Abstract We employ metastable ultracold 173 Yb atoms to study dynamics in the 1D dissipative Fermi–Hubbard model experimentally and theoretically, and observe a complete inhibition of two-body losses after initial fast transient dynamics. We attribute the suppression of particle loss to the dynamical generation of a highly entangled Dicke state. For several lattice depths and for two- and six-spin component mixtures we find very similar dynamics, showing that the creation of strongly correlated states is a robust and universal phenomenon. This offers interesting opportunities for precision measurements.