Absence of damping of low energy excitations in a quasi-2D dipolar Bose gas

Abstract

We develop a theory of damping of low energy, collective excitations in a quasi-2D, homogenous, dipolar Bose gas at zero temperature, via processes whereby an excitation decays into two excitations with lower energy. We find that owing to the nature of the low energy spectrum of a quasi-2D dipolar gas, such processes cannot occur unless the momentum of the incoming quasi-particle exceeds a critical value k_{crit}. We find that as the dipolar interaction strength is increased, this critical value shifts to larger momenta. Our predictions can be directly verified in current experiments on dipolar Bose condensates using Bragg spectroscopy, and provide valuable insight into the quantum many-body physics of dipolar gases.