Quantum reaction-limited reaction–diffusion dynamics of noninteracting Bose gases

Abstract

We investigate quantum reaction–diffusion (RD) systems in one-dimension with bosonic particles that coherently hop in a lattice, and when brought in range react dissipatively. Such reactions involve binary annihilation ( A + A → ∅ ) and coagulation ( A + A → A ) of particles at distance d. We consider the reaction-limited regime, where dissipative reactions take place at a rate that is small compared to that of coherent hopping. In classical RD systems, this regime is correctly captured by the mean-field approximation. In quantum RD systems, for noninteracting fermionic systems, the reaction-limited regime recently attracted considerable attention because it has been shown to give universal power law decay beyond mean field for the density of particles as a function of time. Here, we address the question whether such universal behavior is present also in the case of the noninteracting Bose gas. We show that beyond mean-field density decay for bosons is possible only for reactions that allow for destructive interference of different decay channels. Furthermore, we study an absorbing-state phase transition induced by the competition between branching A → A + A , decay A → ∅ and coagulation A + A → A . We find a stationary phase-diagram, where a first and a second-order transition line meet at a bicritical point which is described by tricritical directed percolation. These results show that quantum statistics significantly impact on both the stationary and the dynamical universal behavior of quantum RD systems.