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Updated: Apr 6, 2026

Isotopic Effect in Double Proton Transfer Process of Porphycene Investigated by Enhanced QM/MM Method
Published on: July 19, 2019
Interaction-induced decay of a heteronuclear two-atom system
Peng Xu1,2, Jiaheng Yang1,2,3, Min Liu1,2
1State Key Laboratory of Magnetic Resonance and Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Wuhan National Laboratory for Optoelectronics, Wuhan Institute of Physics and Mathematics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan 430071, China.
Abstract:
Two-atom systems in small traps are of fundamental interest for understanding the role of interactions in degenerate cold gases and for the creation of quantum gates in quantum information processing with single-atom traps. One of the key quantities is the inelastic relaxation (decay) time when one of the atoms or both are in a higher hyperfine state. Here we measure this quantity in a heteronuclear system of (87)Rb and (85)Rb in a micro optical trap and demonstrate experimentally and theoretically the presence of both fast and slow relaxation processes, depending on the choice of the initial hyperfine states. This experimental method allows us to single out a particular relaxation process thus provides an extremely clean platform for collisional physics studies. Our results have also implications for engineering of quantum states via controlled collisions and creation of two-qubit quantum gates.
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