Decoherence due to three-body loss and its effect on the state of a Bose-Einstein condensate

TL;DR

This paper models how three-body atomic loss causes decoherence in Bose-Einstein condensates, showing that large atom numbers lead to rapid decoherence faster than phase collapse, impacting quantum coherence.

Contribution

It introduces a master equation approach to quantify decoherence due to three-body loss in Bose-Einstein condensates, highlighting the dominance of decoherence over phase collapse for large atom numbers.

Findings

Decoherence time is shorter than phase collapse time for N>10^4.

Coherent states remain pure longer than other states under three-body loss.

Decoherence occurs on a timescale of just three atoms lost from the trap.

Abstract

A Born-Markov master equation is used to investigate the decoherence of the state of a macroscopically occupied mode of a cold atom trap due to three-body loss. In the large number limit only coherent states remain pure for times longer than the decoherence time: the time it takes for just three atoms to be lost from the trap. For large numbers of atoms (N>10^4) the decoherence time is found to be much faster than the phase collapse time caused by intra-trap atomic collisions.