Dissipative Bose-Hubbard system with intrinsic two-body loss

We report an experimental study of dynamics of the metastable ³P₂ state of bosonic ytterbium atoms in an optical lattice. The dissipative Bose-Hubbard system with on-site two-body atom loss is realized via its intrinsic strong inelastic collision of the metastable ³P₂ atoms. We investigate the atom loss behavior with the unit-filling Mott insulator as the initial state and find that the atom loss is suppressed by the strong correlation between atoms, which is attributed to both the on-site interaction and the inelastic loss. Also, as we decrease the potential depth of the lattice, we observe the growth of the phase coherence and find its suppression owing to the dissipation.