Tunable three-body interactions in driven two-component Bose-Einstein condensates

Abstract

We propose and demonstrate the appearance of an effective attractive three-body interaction in coherently-driven two-component Bose Einstein condensates. It originates from the spinor degree of freedom that is affected by a two-body mean-field shift of the driven transition frequency. Importantly, its strength can be controlled with the Rabi-coupling strength and it does not come with additional losses. In the experiment, the three-body interactions are adjusted to play a predominant role in the equation of state of a cigar-shaped trapped condensate. This is confirmed though two striking observations: a downshift of the radial breathing mode frequency and the radial collapses for positive values of the dressed-state scattering length.