arXiv:0710.5083 · Physical Review Letters
Control of Interaction-Induced Dephasing of Bloch Oscillations
Martin G. H. Gustavsson, Elmar Haller, Manfred J. Mark, Johann Georg Danzl, G. Rojas-Kopeinig, Hanns‐Christoph Nägerl
Abstract
We report on the control of interaction-induced dephasing of Bloch oscillations for an atomic Bose-Einstein condensate in an optical lattice. We quantify the dephasing in terms of the width of the quasimomentum distribution and measure its dependence on time for different interaction strengths which we control by means of a Feshbach resonance. For minimal interaction, the dephasing time is increased from a few to more than 20 thousand Bloch oscillation periods, allowing us to realize a BEC-based atom interferometer in the noninteracting limit.