title: Suppressing the loss of ultracold molecules via the continuous quantum Zeno effect.
abstract: We investigate theoretically the suppression of two-body losses when the on-site loss rate is larger than all other energy scales in a lattice. This work quantitatively explains the recently observed suppression of chemical reactions between two rotational states of fermionic KRb molecules confined in one-dimensional tubes with a weak lattice along the tubes [Yan et al., Nature (London) 501, 521 (2013)]. New loss rate measurements performed for different lattice parameters but under controlled initial conditions allow us to show that the loss suppression is a consequence of the combined effects of lattice confinement and the continuous quantum Zeno effect. A key finding, relevant for generic strongly reactive systems, is that while a single-band theory can qualitatively describe the data, a quantitative analysis must include multiband effects. Accounting for these effects reduces the inferred molecule filling fraction by a factor of 5. A rate equation can describe much of the data, but to properly reproduce the loss dynamics with a fixed fillingfraction for all lattice parameters we develop a mean-field model and benchmark it with numerically exacttime-dependent density matrix renormalization group calculations.
authors.affiliation: JILA, NIST, Department of Physics, University of Colorado, 440 UCB, Boulder, Colorado 80309, USA.
authors.forename: B
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Zhu
authors.affiliation: JILA, NIST, Department of Physics, University of Colorado, 440 UCB, Boulder, Colorado 80309, USA.
authors.forename: B
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Gadway
authors.affiliation: JQI, NIST, Department of Physics, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742, USA.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Foss-Feig
authors.affiliation: JILA, NIST, Department of Physics, University of Colorado, 440 UCB, Boulder, Colorado 80309, USA.
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Schachenmayer
authors.affiliation: JILA, NIST, Department of Physics, University of Colorado, 440 UCB, Boulder, Colorado 80309, USA.
authors.forename: M L
authors.initials: ML
authors.lastname: Wall
authors.affiliation: JILA, NIST, Department of Physics, University of Colorado, 440 UCB, Boulder, Colorado 80309, USA.
authors.forename: K R A
authors.initials: KR
authors.lastname: Hazzard
authors.affiliation: JILA, NIST, Department of Physics, University of Colorado, 440 UCB, Boulder, Colorado 80309, USA.
authors.forename: B
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Yan
authors.affiliation: JILA, NIST, Department of Physics, University of Colorado, 440 UCB, Boulder, Colorado 80309, USA.
authors.forename: S A
authors.initials: SA
authors.lastname: Moses
authors.affiliation: JILA, NIST, Department of Physics, University of Colorado, 440 UCB, Boulder, Colorado 80309, USA.
authors.forename: J P
authors.initials: JP
authors.lastname: Covey
authors.affiliation: JILA, NIST, Department of Physics, University of Colorado, 440 UCB, Boulder, Colorado 80309, USA.
authors.forename: D S
authors.initials: DS
authors.lastname: Jin
authors.affiliation: JILA, NIST, Department of Physics, University of Colorado, 440 UCB, Boulder, Colorado 80309, USA.
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Ye
authors.affiliation: JILA, NIST, Department of Physics, University of Colorado, 440 UCB, Boulder, Colorado 80309, USA.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Holland
authors.affiliation: JILA, NIST, Department of Physics, University of Colorado, 440 UCB, Boulder, Colorado 80309, USA.
authors.forename: A M
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Rey