2015/12/26 by Tarik Berrada, Sandrine van Frank, Robert Bücker +5 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #cond-mat.quant-gas
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physreva.93.063620
published as Phys. Rev. A 93, 063620 (2016) · 10 pages, 4 figures + supplemental information (3 pages, 3 figures)
arxiv created 2015/12/26 · arxiv updated 2016/06/22
Interferometry with trapped atomic Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) requires the development of techniques to recombine the two paths of the interferometer and map the accumulated phase difference to a measurable atom number difference. We have implemented and compared two recombining procedures in a double-well based BEC interferometer. The first procedure utilizes the bosonic Josephson effect and controlled tunneling of atoms through the potential barrier, similar to laser light in an optical fibre coupler. The second one relies on the interference of the reflected and transmitted parts of the BEC wavefunction when impinging on the potential barrier, analogous to light impinging on a half-silvered mirror. Both schemes were implemented successfully, yielding an interferometric contrast of about 20% and 42% respectively. Building efficient matter wave recombiners represents an important step towards the coherent manipulation of external quantum superposition states of BECs.