Nonadiabatic dissociation of molecular Bose-Einstein condensates: competition between chemical reactions

TL;DR

This paper develops a theoretical framework for understanding the nonadiabatic dissociation of molecular Bose-Einstein condensates, revealing how chemical reaction competition, symmetries, and quantum correlations influence atomic populations and states.

Contribution

It provides an analytical solution for a model of molecular BEC dissociation, highlighting effects of symmetries and quantum correlations, and introduces a non-Hermitian quantum mechanics approach applicable to experiments.

Findings

Population imbalance sensitive to system parameters under CPT symmetry

Weak symmetry breaking reverses atomic population imbalance

Strong quantum correlations produce multi-mode squeezed atomic states

Abstract

We provide a framework to solve generic models describing the dissociation of multiple molecular Bose-Einstein condensates in a nonadiabatic regime. The competition between individual chemical reactions can lead to non-trivial dependence on critical components such as path interference and symmetries, thus, affecting the final distribution of atomic population. We find an analytical solution for an illustrative example model involving four atomic modes. When the system parameters satisfy $CPT$ symmetry, where $C$ is charge conjugation, $P$ is parity, and $T$ is time-reversal symmetry, our solution predicts a population imbalance between atomic modes that is exponentially sensitive to system parameters. However, a weakly broken symmetry alters the population in each atomic mode and can reverse the population imbalance. Our solution also demonstrates a strong quantum correlation between atomic modes that leads to the spontaneous production of atoms in a multi-mode squeezed state. Moreover, in our framework, a time-dependent non-Hermitian quantum mechanics naturally manifests which can alternatively be realized experimentally in photonic systems.