The dominant scattering channel induced by two-body collision of D-band atoms in triangular optical lattice

Abstract

The mechanism of atomic collisions in excited bands plays an important role in the study of the orbital physics in optical lattices and simulation of condensed matter physics. Atoms distributing in one excited bands of an optical lattice would collide and decay to other bands through different scattering channels. In excited bands of one dimensional lattice, due to lack of geometry, there is no significant difference between cross section of scattering channels. Here, we investigate the collisional scattering channels for atoms in the excited bands of a triangular optical lattice and demonstrate a dominant scattering channel in the experiment. A shortcut method is utilized to load Bose-Einstein condensates of $^{87} {\rm Rb}$ atoms into the first D band with zero quasi-momentum. After some time for evolution, the number of atoms scattering to S band due to two-body collisions is around four times more than that to the second most band. We reveal that the scattering channel to $ss$ band is dominant by theoretical calculation, which agrees with experimental measurements. The appearance of dominant scattering channels in triangular optical lattice is owing to geometric dimension coupling. This work is helpful for the study of many-body systems and directional enhancement in optical lattices.