English

Can three-body recombination purify a quantum gas?

Quantum Gases 2019-07-16 v1 Statistical Mechanics Atomic Physics Quantum Physics

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 η\eta. We predict that the evolution of η\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, η\eta increases further, whereas clouds with lower initial η\eta evolve towards a thermal gas. These dynamical effects should be observable under realistic experimental conditions.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1905.09811,
  title  = {Can three-body recombination purify a quantum gas?},
  author = {Lena H. Dogra and Jake A. P. Glidden and Timon A. Hilker and Christoph Eigen and Eric A. Cornell and Robert P. Smith and Zoran Hadzibabic},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1905.09811},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

4 pages, 3 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-23T09:20:26.538Z