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Pair tunneling of two atoms out of a trap

2013; American Physical Society; Volume: 88; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1103/physreva.88.043633

1538-4446

Massimo Rontani,

Quantum Mechanics and Applications

A simple theory for the tunneling of two cold atoms out of a trap in the presence of an attractive contact force is developed. Two competing decay channels, for single-atom and bound-pair tunneling, respectively, contribute independently to the decay law of the mean atom number in the trap. The single-atom tunneling rate is obtained through the quasiparticle wave function formalism. For pair tunneling an effective equation for the center-of-mass motion is derived, so the calculation of the corresponding tunneling rate is again reduced to a simpler one-body problem. The predicted dependence of tunneling rates on the interaction strength qualitatively agrees with a recent measurement of the two-atom decay time [G. Z\"urn, A. N. Wenz, S. Murmann, T. Lompe, and S. Jochim, arXiv:1307.5153].