Dissipative dynamics and cooling rates of trapped impurity atoms immersed in a reservoir gas

TL;DR

This paper investigates how impurity atoms in anisotropic traps dissipate energy and cool down when immersed in a reservoir gas, analyzing decay dynamics, heating effects, and potential applications in cooling and many-body physics.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of dissipative dynamics and cooling rates of trapped impurity atoms in various trap regimes, including effects of finite temperature reservoirs.

Findings

Decay rates depend on trap parameters and reservoir temperature

Finite temperature reservoirs induce heating effects

Dissipative processes can be harnessed for cooling and controlling many-body systems

Abstract

We study the dissipative dynamics of neutral atoms in anisotropic harmonic potentials, immersed in a reservoir species that is not trapped by the harmonic potential. Considering initial motional excitation of the atoms along one direction, we explore the resulting spontaneous emission of reservoir excitations, across a range of trap parameters from strong to weak radial confinement. In different limits these processes are useful as a basis for analogies to laser cooling, or as a means to introduce controlled dissipation to many-body dynamics. For realistic experimental parameters, we analyse the distribution of the atoms during the decay and determine the effects of heating arising from a finite temperature reservoir.