Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Log inSign up
Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Blog
Job Board
Q3AS

© 2026 Aqora Quantum S.A.S.

TermsPrivacyLegal Notice

Science

Cooling through particle loss

Jelena Stajic

Published Aug 1, 2019• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Quantum Gases Atomic gases can be cooled to a fraction of a degree above absolute zero and—if they are also dense enough—can enter a regime where their quantum properties come to the fore. In reaching this so-called quantum degenerate regime, particle loss through three-body collisions is usually a foe rather than a friend. Dogra et al. predict theoretically that a weakly interacting 3D gas of bosonic atoms can be made more degenerate by exploiting, rather than fighting, three-body particle loss. For the scheme to work, the gas should reside in a homogeneous trap, and the cooling must start from a particular subset of initial conditions, both of which should be realizable in the lab. Phys. Rev. Lett. 123 , 020405 (2019).

DOI
10.1126/science.365.6452.459-d

Related papers

Coaxing quantumness in a molecular gas

Jelena Stajic

Cold Molecules A dilute atomic gas cooled down to very cold temperatures can enter the so-called quantum degenerate regime, where quantum properties of the gas come to the fore. This regime has been achieved for both bosonic and fermionic atoms, but molecules, with their many internal states, present a special challenge. De Marco et al. cooled a bulk gas of fermionic potassium-rubidium molecules to quantum degeneracy (see the Perspective by Zelevinsky). The authors first cooled atomic potassium and rubidium gases separately, then bound them together into potassium-rubidium molecules, and finally brought the molecules down to their ground state. The density profile of the molecular gas revealed the system's quantum nature, which in turn kept the gas stable by suppressing chemical reactions. Science , this issue p. [853][1]; see also p. [820][2] [1]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.aau7230 [2]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.aav9149

Science•Feb 21, 2019•0 citations

Can Three-Body Recombination Purify a Quantum Gas?

Lena Hannah Dogra, Jake Glidden, Timon Hilker +4 more

Three-body recombination in quantum gases is traditionally associated with heating, but it was recently found that it can also cool the gas. We show that in a partially condensed three-dimensional homogeneous Bose gas three-body loss could even purify the sample, that is, reduce the entropy per particle and increase the condensed fraction η. We predict that the evolution of η under continuous three-body loss can, depending on small changes in the initial conditions, exhibit two qualitatively different behaviors-if it is initially above a certain critical value, η increases further, whereas clouds with lower initial η evolve towards a thermal gas. These dynamical effects should be observable under realistic experimental conditions.

arXiv:1905.09811•Physical Review Letters•Jul 12, 2019•21 citations

Cooling a Bose Gas by Three-Body Losses

Max Schemmer, Isabelle Bouchoule

We report the demonstration of cooling by three-body losses in a Bose gas. We use a harmonically confined one-dimensional (1D) Bose gas in the quasicondensate regime and, as the atom number decreases under the effect of three-body losses, the temperature T drops up to a factor of 4. The ratio k_{B}T/(mc^{2}) stays close to 0.64, where m is the atomic mass and c the speed of sound in the trap center. The dimensionless 1D interaction parameter γ, evaluated at the trap center, spans more than 2 orders of magnitudes over the different sets of data. We present a theoretical analysis for a homogeneous 1D gas in the quasicondensate regime, which predicts that the ratio k_{B}T/(mc^{2}) converges towards 0.6 under the effect of three-body losses. More sophisticated theoretical predictions that take into account the longitudinal harmonic confinement and transverse effects are in agreement within 30% with experimental data.

arXiv:1806.09940•Physical Review Letters•Nov 16, 2018•51 citations

The Road to the Unitary Bose Gas

Benno S. Rem

Ultracold gases have become versatile systems to study quantum many-body effects. Their high degree of control and the tunability of the atomic interactions led to important advances in the understanding of strongly correlated matter. In the regime of strong interactions, unlike fermions, the study of bosons is hampered by three-particle recombination that leads to atom losses and keeps the system from reaching a real equilibrium state. In this thesis, we have performed the first quantitative comparison between theory and experiment on the three-particle loss coefficient L_3(a,T), for arbitrary scattering length a and temperature T. For unitary two-particle scattering (|a| → ∞), we show that the three-particle loss coefficient follows the law L_3(∞, T ) = λ_3/T^2, that we have tested using a trapped non-degenerate ^{7}Li gas maintained at constant temperature. The measured value of λ_3 = 2.5(3)_{stat}(6)_{cyst} × 10^{−20}(μK)^2cm^6s^{−1} is, within the error bars in good agreement with the theory prediction λ_3^{th} = 1.52 × 10^{−20}(μK)^2cm^6s^{−1}. We have extended our measurements to arbitrary values of the scattering length a. For a < 0, the theory predicts a smooth connection between the previously derived zero-temperature model for L_3(a, 0) and the unitarity limited loss coefficient L_3(∞, T ). We also show that a second Efimov resonance in 7Li should be observable near a = − 500 a0 for a temperature of 1 μK. Finally, we compare our theoretical prediction with measurements performed at Innsbruck with ^{133}Cs and at Cambridge with ^{39}K. The theory also shows remarkable quantitative agreement with these measurements.

•Jan 1, 2013•1 citation

Feedback cooling Bose gases to quantum degeneracy

Matthew L. Goh, Zain Mehdi, Taylor, Richard L. +5 more

Degenerate quantum gases are instrumental in advancing many-body quantum physics and underpin emerging precision sensing technologies. All state-of-the-art experiments use evaporative cooling to achieve the ultracold temperatures needed for quantum degeneracy, yet evaporative cooling is extremely lossy: more than 99.9% of the gas is discarded. Such final particle number limitations constrain imaging resolution, gas lifetime, and applications leveraging macroscopic quantum coherence. Here we show that atomic Bose gases can be cooled to quantum degeneracy using real-time feedback, an entirely new method that does not suffer the same limitations as evaporative cooling. Through novel quantum-field simulations and scaling arguments, we demonstrate that an initial low-condensate-fraction thermal Bose gas can be cooled to a high-purity Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) by feedback control, with substantially lower atomic loss than evaporative cooling. Advantages of feedback cooling are found to be robust to imperfect detection, finite resolution of the control and measurement, time delay in the control loop, and spontaneous emission. Using feedback cooling to create degenerate sources with high coherence and low entropy enables new capabilities in precision measurement, atomtronics, and few- and many-body quantum physics.

arXiv:2206.05069•Jun 10, 2022•0 citations

Bose Gases near Unitarity

Weiran Li, Tin-Lun Ho

We study the properties of strongly interacting Bose gases at the density and temperature regime when the three-body recombination rate is substantially reduced. In this regime, one can have a Bose gas with all particles in scattering states (i.e., the "upper branch") with little loss even at unitarity over the duration of the experiment. We show that because of bosonic enhancement, pair formation is shifted to the atomic side of the original resonance (where scattering length a(s)<0), opposite to the fermionic case. In a trap, a repulsive Bose gas remains mechanically stable when brought across resonance to the atomic side until it reaches a critical scattering length a(s)*<0. For a(s)<a(s)*, the density consists of a core of upper branch bosons surrounded by an outer layer of equilibrium branch. The conditions of low three-body recombination require that the particle number N<1.024(T/ω)(5/2) in a harmonic trap with frequency ω.

arXiv:1201.1958•Physical Review Letters•May 7, 2012•50 citations
Quantum Gases
Atomic gases can be cooled to a fraction of a degree above absolute zero and—if they are also dense enough—can enter a regime where their quantum properties come to the fore. In reaching this so-called quantum degenerate regime, particle loss through three-body collisions is usually a foe rather than a friend. Dogra et al. predict theoretically that a weakly interacting 3D gas of bosonic atoms can be made more degenerate by exploiting, rather than fighting, three-body particle loss. For the scheme to work, the gas should reside in a homogeneous trap, and the cooling must start from a particular subset of initial conditions, both of which should be realizable in the lab.
Phys. Rev. Lett. 123 , 020405 (2019).
Cold Molecules A dilute atomic gas cooled down to very cold temperatures can enter the so-called quantum degenerate regime, where quantum properties of the gas come to the fore. This regime has been achieved for both bosonic and fermionic atoms, but molecules, with their many internal states, present a special challenge. De Marco et al. cooled a bulk gas of fermionic potassium-rubidium molecules to quantum degeneracy (see the Perspective by Zelevinsky). The authors first cooled atomic potassium and rubidium gases separately, then bound them together into potassium-rubidium molecules, and finally brought the molecules down to their ground state. The density profile of the molecular gas revealed the system's quantum nature, which in turn kept the gas stable by suppressing chemical reactions. Science , this issue p. [853][1]; see also p. [820][2] [1]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.aau7230 [2]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.aav9149
Three-body recombination in quantum gases is traditionally associated with heating, but it was recently found that it can also cool the gas. We show that in a partially condensed three-dimensional homogeneous Bose gas three-body loss could even purify the sample, that is, reduce the entropy per particle and increase the condensed fraction η. We predict that the evolution of η under continuous three-body loss can, depending on small changes in the initial conditions, exhibit two qualitatively different behaviors-if it is initially above a certain critical value, η increases further, whereas clouds with lower initial η evolve towards a thermal gas. These dynamical effects should be observable under realistic experimental conditions.
We report the demonstration of cooling by three-body losses in a Bose gas. We use a harmonically confined one-dimensional (1D) Bose gas in the quasicondensate regime and, as the atom number decreases under the effect of three-body losses, the temperature T drops up to a factor of 4. The ratio k_{B}T/(mc^{2}) stays close to 0.64, where m is the atomic mass and c the speed of sound in the trap center. The dimensionless 1D interaction parameter γ, evaluated at the trap center, spans more than 2 orders of magnitudes over the different sets of data. We present a theoretical analysis for a homogeneous 1D gas in the quasicondensate regime, which predicts that the ratio k_{B}T/(mc^{2}) converges towards 0.6 under the effect of three-body losses. More sophisticated theoretical predictions that take into account the longitudinal harmonic confinement and transverse effects are in agreement within 30% with experimental data.
Ultracold gases have become versatile systems to study quantum many-body effects. Their high degree of control and the tunability of the atomic interactions led to important advances in the understanding of strongly correlated matter. In the regime of strong interactions, unlike fermions, the study of bosons is hampered by three-particle recombination that leads to atom losses and keeps the system from reaching a real equilibrium state. In this thesis, we have performed the first quantitative comparison between theory and experiment on the three-particle loss coefficient L_3(a,T), for arbitrary scattering length a and temperature T. For unitary two-particle scattering (|a| → ∞), we show that the three-particle loss coefficient follows the law L_3(∞, T ) = λ_3/T^2, that we have tested using a trapped non-degenerate ^{7}Li gas maintained at constant temperature. The measured value of λ_3 = 2.5(3)_{stat}(6)_{cyst} × 10^{−20}(μK)^2cm^6s^{−1} is, within the error bars in good agreement with the theory prediction λ_3^{th} = 1.52 × 10^{−20}(μK)^2cm^6s^{−1}. We have extended our measurements to arbitrary values of the scattering length a. For a < 0, the theory predicts a smooth connection between the previously derived zero-temperature model for L_3(a, 0) and the unitarity limited loss coefficient L_3(∞, T ). We also show that a second Efimov resonance in 7Li should be observable near a = − 500 a0 for a temperature of 1 μK. Finally, we compare our theoretical prediction with measurements performed at Innsbruck with ^{133}Cs and at Cambridge with ^{39}K. The theory also shows remarkable quantitative agreement with these measurements.
Degenerate quantum gases are instrumental in advancing many-body quantum physics and underpin emerging precision sensing technologies. All state-of-the-art experiments use evaporative cooling to achieve the ultracold temperatures needed for quantum degeneracy, yet evaporative cooling is extremely lossy: more than 99.9% of the gas is discarded. Such final particle number limitations constrain imaging resolution, gas lifetime, and applications leveraging macroscopic quantum coherence. Here we show that atomic Bose gases can be cooled to quantum degeneracy using real-time feedback, an entirely new method that does not suffer the same limitations as evaporative cooling. Through novel quantum-field simulations and scaling arguments, we demonstrate that an initial low-condensate-fraction thermal Bose gas can be cooled to a high-purity Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) by feedback control, with substantially lower atomic loss than evaporative cooling. Advantages of feedback cooling are found to be robust to imperfect detection, finite resolution of the control and measurement, time delay in the control loop, and spontaneous emission. Using feedback cooling to create degenerate sources with high coherence and low entropy enables new capabilities in precision measurement, atomtronics, and few- and many-body quantum physics.
We study the properties of strongly interacting Bose gases at the density and temperature regime when the three-body recombination rate is substantially reduced. In this regime, one can have a Bose gas with all particles in scattering states (i.e., the "upper branch") with little loss even at unitarity over the duration of the experiment. We show that because of bosonic enhancement, pair formation is shifted to the atomic side of the original resonance (where scattering length a(s)<0), opposite to the fermionic case. In a trap, a repulsive Bose gas remains mechanically stable when brought across resonance to the atomic side until it reaches a critical scattering length a(s)*<0. For a(s)<a(s)*, the density consists of a core of upper branch bosons surrounded by an outer layer of equilibrium branch. The conditions of low three-body recombination require that the particle number N<1.024(T/ω)(5/2) in a harmonic trap with frequency ω.