Can three-body recombination purify a quantum gas?

Abstract

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 $\eta$. We predict that the evolution of $\eta$ under continuous three-body loss can, depending on small changes in the initial conditions, exhibit two qualitatively different behaviours - if it is initially above a certain critical value, $\eta$ increases further, whereas clouds with lower initial $\eta$ evolve towards a thermal gas. These dynamical effects should be observable under realistic experimental conditions.

arXiv comment4 pages, 3 figures

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Cited by in corpus (6)

• Strong correlations in lossy one-dimensional quantum gases: from the quantum Zeno effect to the generalized Gibbs ensemble
• A dynamical theory for one-dimensional fermions with strong two-body losses: universal non-Hermitian Zeno physics and spin-charge separation
• On the Stability of the Repulsive Fermi Gas with Contact Interactions
• One-dimensional spin-1/2 fermionic gases with two-body losses: weak dissipation and spin conservation
• Strong spin-exchange recombination of three weakly interacting ${}^7$Li atoms
• Tunable three-body loss in a nonlinear Rydberg medium