We propose a method of controlling two- and three-body interactions in an ultracold Bose gas in any dimension. The method requires us to have two coupled internal single-particle states split in energy such that the upper state is occupied virtually but amply during collisions. By varying system parameters, one can switch off the two-body interaction while maintaining a strong three-body one. The mechanism can be implemented for dipolar bosons in the bilayer configuration with tunneling or in an atomic system by using radio-frequency fields to couple two hyperfine states. One can then aim to observe a purely three-body interacting gas, dilute self-trapped droplets, the paired superfluid phase, Pfaffian state, and other exotic phenomena.
We propose a method of controlling two- and three-body interactions in an ultracold Bose gas in any dimension. The method requires us to have two coupled internal single-particle states split in energy such that the upper state is occupied virtually but amply during collisions. By varying system parameters, one can switch off the two-body interaction while maintaining a strong three-body one. The mechanism can be implemented for dipolar bosons in the bilayer configuration with tunneling or in an atomic system by using radio-frequency fields to couple two hyperfine states. One can then aim to observe a purely three-body interacting gas, dilute self-trapped droplets, the paired superfluid phase, Pfaffian state, and other exotic phenomena.
Ultracold atoms offer valuable opportunities where interparticle interactions can be controlled at will. In particular, by extinguishing the two-body interaction, one can realize unique systems governed by the three-body interaction, which is otherwise hidden behind the two-body interaction. Here we study one-dimensional bosons with a weak three-body attraction and show that they form few-body bound states as well as a many-body droplet stabilized by the quantum mechanical effect. Their binding energies relative to that of three bosons are all universal and the ground-state energy of the dilute droplet is found to grow exponentially as ${E}_{N}/{E}_{3}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}exp(8{N}^{2}/\sqrt{3}\ensuremath{\pi})$ with increasing particle number $N\ensuremath{\gg}1$. The realization of our system with coupled two-component bosons in an optical lattice is also discussed.
Bose-Einstein condensation, observed in either strongly interacting liquid helium or weakly interacting atomic Bose gases, is widely known to be a second-order phase transition. Here we predict a first-order Bose-Einstein condensation in a cloud of harmonically trapped bosons interacting with both attractive two-body interaction and repulsive three-body interaction, characterized respectively by an s-wave scattering length a<0 and a three-body scattering hypervolume D>0. It happens when the harmonic trapping potential is weak, so with increasing temperature the system changes from a low-temperature liquidlike quantum droplet to a normal gas and therefore experiences a first-order liquid-to-gas transition. At large trapping potential, however, the quantum droplet can first turn into a superfluid gas, rendering the condensation transition occurring later from a superfluid gas to a normal gas smooth. We determine a rich phase diagram and show the existence of a tricritical point, where the three phases, i.e., quantum droplet, superfluid gas, and normal gas, meet. We argue that an ensemble of spin-polarized tritium atoms could be a promising candidate to observe the predicted first-order Bose-Einstein condensation, across which the condensate fraction or central condensate density jumps to zero and the surface-mode frequencies diverge.
I adopt a two-mode bosonic model with both strong atom–atom interaction and a periodic driven field to investigate the bias-modulated tunneling dynamics. I show that the quantum tunneling between two bosonic modes can be efficiently switched on/off when one continuously varies the amplitude of the driven field with an intermediate frequency. I explore the role of the atom–atom interaction on the switch effect as well. For the strong interaction case, in contrast to the unmodulated situation, there exists many windows in the atomic interaction domain for switching on/off the quantum tunneling. This result suggests a potential way to accurately control the quantum tunneling or coherent coupling of ultracold atoms in the strong interaction and self-trapping regimes.
This thesis investigates two topics: ultracold atomic collisions in a radio-frequency field and universal properties of a degenerate unitary Bose gas. One interesting point of the unitary Bose gas is that the system has only one length scale, that is, the average interparticle distance. This single parameter determines all properties of the gas, which is called the universality of the system. We first introduce a renormalized contact interaction to extend the validity of the zero-range interaction to large scattering lengths. Then this renormalized interaction is applied to many-body theories to determined those universal relations of the system. From the few-body perspective, we discuss the scattering between atoms in a single-color radio-frequency field. Our motivation is proposing the radio-frequency field as an effective tool to control interactions between cold atoms. Such a technique may be useful in future experiments such as creating phase transitions in spinor condensates. We also discuss the formation of ultracold molecules using radio-freqency fields from a time-dependent approach.
This thesis is devoted to the rigorous study of dilute Bose gases with two-body and three-body interactions at zero temperature in two and three dimensions. Bose gases are many-body quantum systems composed of bosons, which notably do not obey the Pauli exclusion principle. As a consequence, at extremely low temperatures, a macroscopic fraction of the particles can occupy the same one-body quantum state. This phenomenon, known as Bose–Einstein condensation, was predicted in the 1920s by Bose and Einstein for noninteracting Bose gases, and first realised experimentally by the groups of Cornell and Wieman, and Ketterle, earning them the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2001. However, proving the occurrence of Bose–Einstein condensation in general interacting bosonic systems remains a major open problem and constitutes a central theme in this thesis. Another important property of bosonic matter is that it is generally more unstable than fermionic matter. In particular, for systems interacting via the Coulomb force, the Pauli exclusion principle is essential for explaining the stability of the second kind, which states that the energy and volume scale linearly with the number of particles. Nonetheless, bosonic systems with attractive but less singular interactions can also be stable, and the rigorous proof of this fact forms a second focus of this thesis. In three dimensions, we consider predominantly repulsive interactions. Firstly, we prove a leading order upper bound on the thermodynamic ground state energy of Bose gases with hard-core three-body interactions, which matches an existing lower bound. In addition, we obtain a simpler proof for integrable potentials. Secondly, we derive the leading order of the thermodynamic ground state energy of Bose gases with combined two-body and three-body interactions. More specifically, we show that, at the leading order, the ground state energy is entirely characterised by the scattering length of the two-body potential and the scattering hypervolume of the three-body potential. Thirdly, we study the time evolution of Bose–Einstein condensates with three-body interactions in the so-called Gross–Pitaevskii regime. We show that Bose–Einstein condensation is preserved under many-body evolution and that the condensate wavefunction evolves according to the quintic Gross–Pitaevskii equation. In particular, we show that the effective coupling constant is universal in the sense that it depends only on the scattering hypervolume of the interaction potential. As a by-product of our proof, we derive a stability of the second kind result for Bose gases with attractive two-body interactions and repulsive three-body interactions. In two dimensions, we consider trapped Bose gases with mean-field-type interactions, including the purely attractive case. We prove the stability of the second kind of the system and the convergence of the ground state energy per particle to that of a non-linear Schrödinger energy functional. As a consequence of the stability of the second kind, we also obtain Bose–Einstein condensation for the many-body ground states.
This thesis describes experiments on few-body interactions in a mixture of ultracold bosonic 87Rb and fermionic 40K atoms. Ultracold atoms are celebrated as a platform to explore fundamental quantum physics because their internal states, external potentials, and interactions with each other can be controlled by straightforward electrical and optical tools. In the case of Bose-Fermi mixtures, control comes at the cost of stability when strong interactions give rise to inelastic collisions that destroy the atomic samples. I present detailed measurements of the cross sections for these inelastic processes and discuss how they fit into an emerging pattern of resonances that is leading to better models of few-atom interactions. These phenomena have their roots in universal Efimov physics, which is a paradigm of quantum three-body interactions that was originally inspired by exotic nuclear states. I also discuss several methods to control the formation of KRb Feshbach molecules within the finite lifetime of the interacting K and Rb atomic mixture.