Effects of atom losses on a one-dimensional lattice gas of hardcore bosons

Abstract

Atom losses occur naturally during cold atoms experiments. Since this phenomenon is unavoidable, it is important to understand its effect on the remaining atoms. Here we study a gas of hard-core bosons on a lattice subject to $K$-body losses (where $K=1,2,3,\dots$ is the number of atoms lost in each loss event), and in particular we investigate the effect of losses on the rapidity distribution $ρ(k)$ of the atoms. Under the assumption that losses are weak enough so that the system relaxes between two loss events, we are able to determine the loss functional $F[ρ](k)$ encoding the loss process for $K$-body losses. We derive closed expressions for the cases of one- and two-body losses, and show their effects on the evolution of the total number of particles. Then we add a harmonic trapping potential and study the evolution of the position-dependent rapidity distribution of this system by solving numerically the evolution equation for one-, two- and three-body losses.