Three-body spin mixing in spin-1 Bose-Einstein condensates

P. M. A. Mestrom, J.-L. Li, V. E. Colussi, T. Secker, and S. J. J. M. F. Kokkelmans
Phys. Rev. A 104, 023321 – Published 24 August 2021

Abstract

We study zero-energy collisions between three identical bosons with spin f=1 interacting via pairwise potentials. We quantify the corresponding three-body scattering hypervolumes, which parametrize the effective three-body interaction strengths in a many-body description of spin-1 Bose-Einstein condensates. Our results demonstrate universal behavior of the scattering hypervolumes for strong s- and p-wave two-body interactions. At weak interactions, we find that the real parts of the scattering hypervolumes are predominantly determined by hard-hyperspherelike collisions, which we characterize by a simple formula. With this universal result, we estimate that spin mixing via three-body collisions starts to dominate over two-body spin mixing at a typical particle density of 1017cm3 for Na23 and K41 spinor condensates. This density can be reduced by tuning the two-body interactions to an s- or p-wave dimer resonance or to a point where two-body spin mixing effectively vanishes. Another possibility to observe the effects of three-body spin mixing involves the application of weak magnetic fields to cancel out the effective two-body interaction strength in the characteristic timescale describing the spin dynamics.

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  • Received 11 May 2021
  • Accepted 27 July 2021

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.104.023321

©2021 American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Atomic, Molecular & Optical

Authors & Affiliations

P. M. A. Mestrom1,*, J.-L. Li1, V. E. Colussi2, T. Secker1, and S. J. J. M. F. Kokkelmans1

  • 1Eindhoven University of Technology, P. O. Box 513, 5600 MB Eindhoven, The Netherlands
  • 2INO-CNR BEC Center and Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Trento, 38123 Povo, Italy

  • *Corresponding author: p.m.a.mestrom@tue.nl

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Issue

Vol. 104, Iss. 2 — August 2021

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