Complex Contact Interaction for Systems with Short-Range Two-Body Losses

The concept of contact interaction is fundamental in various areas of physics. It simplifies physical models by replacing the detailed short-range interaction with a zero-range contact potential that reproduces the same low-energy scattering parameter, i.e., the s-wave scattering length. In this Letter, we generalize this concept to open quantum systems with short-range two-body losses. We show that the short-range two-body losses can be effectively described by a complex scattering length. However, in contrast to closed systems, the dynamics of an open quantum system is governed by the Lindblad master equation the includes a non-Hermitian Hamiltonian as well as an extra recycling term. We thus develop proper methods to regularize both terms in the master equation in the contact (zero-range) limit. We then apply our regularized complex contact interaction to study the dynamic problem of a weakly interacting and dissipating Bose-Einstein condensate. It is found that the physics is greatly enriched because the scattering length is continued from the real axis to the complex plane. For example, we show that a strong dissipation may prevent an attractive Bose-Einstein condensate from collapsing. We further calculate the particle decay in this system to the order of (density)3/2 which resembles the celebrated Lee-Huang-Yang correction to the ground state energy of interacting Bose gases [Lee and Yang, Phys. Rev. 105, 1119 (1957)PHRVAO0031-899X10.1103/PhysRev.105.1119; Lee, Huang, and Yang, Phys. Rev. 106, 1135 (1957)PHRVAO0031-899X10.1103/PhysRev.106.1135]. Possible methods for tuning the complex scattering length in cold atomic gas experiments are also discussed.