Resonance triplet dynamics in the quenched unitary Bose gas

TL;DR

This paper introduces a conserving many-body theory to model the complex out-of-equilibrium dynamics of a quenched unitary Bose gas, revealing the role of three-body correlations in the system's heating process.

Contribution

It develops a novel theoretical framework that captures non-Gaussian correlations and the departure from prethermalization in strongly interacting Bose gases.

Findings

Growth of lossless three-body correlations drives system heating.

The connection between two- and three-body contacts and momentum distribution tail is obscured post-prethermal stage.

The framework can be applied to other quantum systems with strong few-body correlations.

Abstract

The quenched unitary Bose gas is a paradigmatic example of a strongly interacting out-of-equilibrium quantum system, whose dynamics become difficult to describe theoretically due to the growth of non-Gaussian quantum correlations. We develop a conserving many-body theory capable of capturing these effects, allowing us to model the post-quench dynamics in the previously inaccessible time regime where the gas departs from the universal prethermal stage. Our results show that this departure is driven by the growth of strong lossless three-body correlations, rather than atomic losses, thus framing the heating of the gas in this regime as a fully coherent phenomenon. We uncover the specific few-body scattering processes that affect this heating, and show that the expected connection between the two-body and three-body contacts and the tail of the momentum distribution is obscured following the prethermal stage, explaining the absence of this connection in experiments. Our general framework, which reframes the dynamics of unitary quantum systems in terms of explicit connections to microscopic physics, can be broadly applied to any quantum system containing strong few-body correlations.