A Microscopic Description for Two Body Loss in Cold Atoms Near Feshbach Resonances with Strong Spontaneous Emission

TL;DR

This paper develops a microscopic theory for two-body loss in cold fermionic atoms near Feshbach resonances, revealing discrepancies with phenomenological models especially for p-wave resonances at low temperatures.

Contribution

It introduces a microscopic Keldysh path integral approach to describe two-body loss, highlighting the importance of the loss coefficient's functional form for p-wave resonances.

Findings

Microscopic theory matches phenomenology for s-wave resonance.

Discrepancies appear for p-wave resonance due to loss coefficient form.

High temperature thermal averaging reduces the discrepancy.

Abstract

We study the two body loss dynamics of fermionic cold atoms near $s$- and $p$-wave Feshbach resonances with a microscopic Keldysh path integral formalism and compare the result to the macroscopic phenomenological loss rate equation. The microscopic loss rate equation is an integral-differential equation of the momentum distribution that depends on the functional form of the loss rate coefficient. For $s$-wave resonance, the microscopic theory yields the same result as the phenomenological equation. However, the calculation of $p$-wave resonance shows a discrepancy between the two descriptions for an quantum-degenerate gas. This discrepancy originates from the functional form of the loss coefficient which is associated with the microscopic loss mechanism of the two body loss and is neglected in the phenomenological equations where the coefficient is typically a constant. We find the discrepancy between the microscopic theory and the phenomenological description is smeared by thermal average at high temperature, $T\gtrsim T_F$ where $T_F$ is the Fermi temperature.