Universal Threshold Memory in Bound-State Recapture

Abstract

Driven slowly, a quantum system forgets how it was driven. We show that a bound state taken slowly to its continuum threshold and back does not. The recaptured fraction depends on the ratio of the approach and return rates, however slow both are. The two rates set the sizes of two threshold packets whose phase-sensitive overlap fixes recapture. Common slowing preserves their size ratio. A factorized treatment of approach and return misses this dependence. For a short-range $s$-wave state whose inverse scattering length touches zero quadratically in time, we obtain the dependence in closed form, with the maximum $1/φ^2$ at matched rates, where $φ$ is the golden ratio. A ratio of three recaptured fractions makes this threshold memory accessible with finite pulses. For radio-frequency-dressed $^{85}$Rb halo dimers with half-pulse widths of 30 and $120~μ$s, coupled-channel calculations give this ratio within $0.5\%$ of its slow-limit value.