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arXiv:cond-mat/0310510 · Physical Review Letters

Inhibiting Three-Body Recombination in Atomic Bose-Einstein Condensates

Christopher P. Search, Weiping Zhang, Pierre Meystre

Published Apr 6, 2004• 23 citations
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Abstract

We discuss the possibility of inhibiting three-body recombination in atomic Bose-Einstein condensates via the application of resonant 2pi laser pulses. These pulses result in the periodic change in the phase of the molecular state by pi, which leads to destructive interference between the decay amplitudes following successive pulses. We show that the decay rate can be reduced by several orders of magnitude under realistic conditions.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.92.140401

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We discuss the possibility of inhibiting three-body recombination in atomic Bose-Einstein condensates via the application of resonant 2pi laser pulses. These pulses result in the periodic change in the phase of the molecular state by pi, which leads to destructive interference between the decay amplitudes following successive pulses. We show that the decay rate can be reduced by several orders of magnitude under realistic conditions.
Summary form only given. Dynamical control of the atomic tunneling between two Bose-Einstein condensates (BEC's) confined in a double-well potential is predicted to occur when laser pulses induce transition between one of the condensate state and the excited state which brings about phase shifts for the condensate wave function, leading to transition between macroscopic quantum self-trapping, which is a self-maintained population imbalance between two BEC's due to interatomic interaction, and large amplitude oscillations. We investigate this phenomenon for the case of a three-level system with two condensate states and an excited state.
We study the theory of several aspects of the dynamics of coherent atom-molecule conversion in spin-one Bose-Einstein condensates. Specifically, we discuss how, for a suitable dark-state condition, the interplay of spin-exchange collisions and photo association leads to the stable creation of an atom-molecule pair from three initial spin-zero atoms. This process involves two two-body interactions and can be intuitively viewed as an effective three-body recombination. We investigate the relative roles of photo association and of the initial magnetization in the ``resonant'' case, where the dark-state condition is perfectly satisfied. We also consider the ``nonresonant'' case, where that condition is satisfied either only approximately---the so-called adiabatic case---or not at all. In the adiabatic case, we derive an effective nonrigid pendulum model that allows one to conveniently discuss the onset of an antiferromagnetic instability in an ``atom-molecule pendulum,'' as well as large-amplitude pair oscillations and atom-molecule entanglement.
In recent experiments on Na Bose-Einstein condensates [S. Inouye et al., Nature 392, 151 (1998); J. Stenger et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 82, 2422 (1999)], large loss rates were observed when a time-varying magnetic field was used to tune a molecular Feshbach resonance state near the state of atom pairs that belong to the condensate many-body wave function. A mechanism is offered here to account for the observed losses. It is based on the deactivation of the resonant molecular state by interaction with a third condensate atom, with a deactivation rate coefficient of magnitude $\ensuremath{\sim}{10}^{\ensuremath{-}10} {\mathrm{cm}}^{3}/\mathrm{s}.$
We have used three-body recombination rates as a sensitive probe of the statistical correlations between atoms in Bose-Einstein condensates (BEC) and in ultracold noncondensed dilute atomic gases. We infer that density fluctuations are suppressed in the BEC samples. We measured the three-body recombination rate constants for condensates and cold noncondensates from number loss in the ${F\phantom{\rule{0ex}{0ex}}=\phantom{\rule{0ex}{0ex}}1,m}_{f}\phantom{\rule{0ex}{0ex}}=\phantom{\rule{0ex}{0ex}}\ensuremath{-}1$ hyperfine state of 87Rb{}^{87}\mathrm{Rb}87Rb. The ratio of these is 7.4(2.6)7.4(2.6)7.4(2.6) which agrees with the theoretical factor of 3!3!3! and demonstrates that condensate atoms are less bunched than noncondensate atoms.
Three-body recombination can play an important role in experiments on ultracold atomic gases because it can produce significant atom loss. Such losses have been seen in Bose-Einstein condensates, but have been thought to play little role for degenerate Fermi gases. We show that under some circumstances, three-body recombination can be just as large in fermi systems as in bose systems. In particular, when there is a two-body resonance near threshold — as is often the case experimentally — the threshold suppression due to the Pauli principle no longer applies. 1