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Rogue decoherence in the formation of a macroscopic atom-molecule superposition
We theoretically examine two-color photoassociation of a Bose-Einstein
condensate, focusing on the role of rogue decoherence in the formation of
macroscopic atom-molecule superpositions. Rogue dissociation occurs when two
zero-momentum condensate atoms are photoassociated into a molecule, which then
dissociates into a pair of atoms of equal-and-opposite momentum, instead of
dissociating back to the zero-momentum condensate. As a source of decoherence
that may damp quantum correlations in the condensates, rogue dissociation is an
obstacle to the formation of a macroscopic atom-molecule superposition. We
study rogue decoherence in a setup which, without decoherence, yields a
macroscopic atom-molecule superposition, and find that the most favorable
conditions for said superposition are a density ~ 1e12 atoms per cc and
temperature ~ 1e-10.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures, 46+ references; submitted to PR
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