Dissipative Bose-Hubbard system with intrinsic two-body loss

TL;DR

This paper experimentally investigates a dissipative Bose-Hubbard system with intrinsic two-body loss using metastable ytterbium atoms in an optical lattice, revealing atom loss suppression due to strong correlations and dissipation effects on phase coherence.

Contribution

It demonstrates the realization of a dissipative Bose-Hubbard system with intrinsic two-body loss and explores how correlations and dissipation influence atom loss and phase coherence.

Findings

Atom loss is suppressed by strong atom correlations.

Decreasing lattice depth enhances phase coherence.

Dissipation suppresses phase coherence growth.

Abstract

We report an experimental study of dynamics of the metastable $^3P_2$ state of bosonic ytterbium atoms in an optical lattice. The dissipative Bose-Hubbard system with on-site two-body atom loss is realized via its intrinsic strong inelastic collision of the metastable $^3P_2$ atoms. We investigate the atom loss behavior with the unit-filling Mott insulator as the initial state and find that the atom loss is suppressed by the strong correlation between atoms. Also, as we decrease the potential depth of the lattice, we observe the growth of the phase coherence and find its suppression owing to the dissipation.