Dipolar gases like erbium and dysprosium have a dense spectrum of resonant loss features associated with their strong anisotropic interaction potential. These resonances display various behaviours with density and temperature, implying diverse microscopic properties. Here, we quantitatively investigate the low-field (
B<6G) loss features in ultracold thermal samples of
162Dy, revealing two- and three-body dominated loss processes. We investigate their temperature dependence and detect a feature compatible with a
d-wave Fano-Feshbach resonance, which has not been observed before. We also analyse the expansion of the dipolar Bose-Einstein condensate as a function of the magnetic field and interpret the changes in size close to the resonances with a variation in the scattering length.
Ultracold gases of highly magnetic lanthanide atoms have enabled the realization of dipolar quantum droplets and supersolids. However, future studies could be limited by the achievable atom numbers and hindered by high three-body loss rates. Here we study density-dependent atom loss in an ultracold gas of
166Er for magnetic fields below 4 G, identifying six previously unreported, strongly temperature-dependent features. We find that their positions and widths show a linear temperature dependence up to at least $15\phantom{\rule{0.16em}{0ex}}\textmu{}\mathrm{K}$. In addition, we observe a weak, polarization-dependent shift of the loss features with the intensity of the light used to optically trap the atoms. This detailed knowledge of the loss landscape allows us to optimize the production of dipolar Bose-Einstein condensates with more than $2\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{10}^{5}$ atoms and points towards optimal strategies for the study of large-atom-number dipolar gases in the droplet and supersolid regimes.
Achieving precise control of ultracold atomic gases requires a detailed understanding of atom loss mechanisms. Motivated by the anomalous three-body decay in a three-component Fermi gas reported in Ref. [1], this work investigates mechanisms that possibly contribute to the observed loss. The three-body Schrödinger equation is solved in the hyperspherical adiabatic representation with pairwise van der Waals interactions, and the
S-matrix is obtained via the eigenchannel
R-matrix method to compute recombination rate coefficients
K3 and two-body cross sections. At the magnetic field strength where the anomalous decay occurs,
K3 is unitary limited, exhibiting the threshold energy scaling
K3(E)∝E−1. Consequently, the thermally averaged
⟨K3⟩ acquires a temperature dependence. Because the experiment is performed in the degenerate regime,
⟨K3⟩ also explicitly depends on the per-spin densities through the per-spin Fermi energies
EF(i)∝ni2/3. As the gas is diluted and degeneracy is reduced,
⟨K3⟩ approaches the non-degenerate value and becomes a function of temperature only. Channel-resolved branching ratios and cross sections are folded into a Monte Carlo cascade simulation of secondary collisions and trap escape. The analysis indicates that typical three-body recombination events remove fewer than three atoms on average, and that the atom losses are primarily due to the ejection of secondary collision products, rather than the initial three-body recombination products. Therefore, a significant fraction of the released binding energy remains in the trapped ensemble as kinetic energy. Retained energy drives evaporative loss, offering a plausible, partial explanation for the anomalous decay.
We report on the high-resolution Feshbach spectroscopy on a degenerate, spin-polarized Fermi gas of 161Dy atoms, measuring three-body recombination losses at a low magnetic field. For field strengths up to 1 G, we identify as much as 44 resonance features and observe the plateaus of very low losses. For four selected typical resonances, we study the dependence of the threebody recombination rate coefficient on the magnetic resonance detuning and on the temperature. We observe a strong suppression of losses with decreasing temperature already for small detunings from the resonance. The characterization of complex behavior of the three-body losses of fermionic 161Dy is important for future applications of this peculiar species in research on atomic quantum gases.
Physical systems in reduced dimensions exhibit intriguing properties. For instance, the dependences of two-body and many-body physics on scattering lengths are distinct from their counterparts in three dimensions. Whereas many studies of ultracold atoms and molecules in reduced dimensions have been focusing on closed systems, two-body losses may occur in such systems. Here, we show that the two-body inelastic loss rate in reduced dimensions can be expressed in universal relations that are governed by contacts. These universal relations correlate the two-body decay rate with other physical observables at zero and finite temperatures and generic interaction strengths. Our results will provide experimentalists with a new protocol to study inelastic scatterings in both few- and many-body systems in reduced dimensions.