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arXiv:0803.2828 · Europhysics news

Quantum atom optics with bosons and fermions

Alain Aspect, Denis Boiron, Christoph Ira Westbrook

Published Jan 1, 2008• 4 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Atom optics, a field which takes much inspiration from traditional optics, has advanced to the point that some of the fundamental experiments of quantum optics, involving photon correlations, have found atomic analogs. We discuss some recent experiments on atom bunching and anti-bunching as well as some prospects for extending them to the field of many body physics.

DOI
10.1051/epn:2008004

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Atom optics, a field which takes much inspiration from traditional optics, has advanced to the point that some of the fundamental experiments of quantum optics, involving photon correlations, have found atomic analogs. We discuss some recent experiments on atom bunching and anti-bunching as well as some prospects for extending them to the field of many body physics.
Atom optics, a field which takes much inspiration from traditional optics, has advanced to the point that some of the fundamental experiments of quantum optics, involving photon correlations, have found atomic analogs. We discuss some recent experiments on atom bunching and anti-bunching as well as some prospects for extending them to the field of many body physics. Most of the time, experimental physicists fight to eliminate noise. But the history of physics is full of examples in which the study of noise, or more precisely fluctuation phenomena, has led to significant discoveries. A famous example is Einstein's analysis of Brownian motion in 1905 which played a crucial role in the development of the atomic theory of matter. And several times in his later career, Einstein returned to the study of fluctuations. In the famous 1925 article in which he described what we now know as Bose-Einstein condensation1, Einstein considered the fluctuation in the number of particles N in a small volume within a larger volume of an ideal gas at a given temperature. Using thermodynamic arguments, he found a formula for the variance of N: δN2 = 〈N 〉 + 〈N〉2 / g (1)
Superconducting circuits [1-11] based on Josephson junctions exhibit macroscopic quantum coherence and can behave like artificial atoms. Recent technological advances have made it possible to implement atomic-physics and quantum-optics experiments on a chip using these artificial atoms. This pedagogical talk presents a brief introduction to this rapidly advancing field. We not only discuss phenomena analogous to those in atomic physics and quantum optics with natural atoms, but also highlight those not occurring in natural atoms.
The field of atom optics has progressed rapidly over the past 20 years since the realisation of Bose-Einstein condensation, such that the wave behaviour of atomic gases is now routinely demonstrated. Furthermore, the study of quantum atom optics, which goes beyond a ‘mean-field’ description of quantum systems to consider the behaviour of single particles, has demonstrated both the similarities between photons and massive species, and their differences as a result of the internal structure and external interactions of atoms. An important class of observable quantities which allow such effects to be measured are nth order correlation functions, which can be interpreted as a result of either particle or wave behaviour. These functions provide a statistical description of fluctuations in n-tuples of particles in a source, which rigorously defines concepts such as coherence. The quantum statistics of a Bose-Einstein condensate should be the same as that for an optical laser, while an ideal thermal Bose gas matches the behaviour of incoherent light. However, correlation measurements can also be used to quantify the influence of interactions, dimensionality, confining potentials and waveguides, and the difference in quantum statistics between fermions and bosons, which illustrates the rich range of behaviour exhibited by atomic gases. In this thesis, several aspects of quantum atom optics are explored with experiments using ultracold metastable helium, a species with the unique advantage of facilitating simple single-atom detection with high resolution, while still allowing Bose-Einstein condensates to be formed. The coherence of atomic systems is shown to be maintained when outcoupled as pulsed atom lasers, and the long-range order characteristic of Bose-Einstein condensates is demonstrated to third order for the first time. Conversely, thermal bunching is observed for a variety of atomic systems, including the measurement of correlation functions up to sixth order with near-ideal interference contrast. These results clearly demonstrate the correspondence between the quantum statistics of photons and atoms as was formalised by Glauber, as well as confirming the validity of applying Wick’s theorem to simplify the statistics of atomic gases. Correlation functions are also shown to be an ideal tool to probe the quantum state of an ultracold gas, and were used to observe the phenomenon of transverse condensation in an elongated Bose gas, as well as characterise the mode occupancy of matter waves guided by an optical potential. Ultracold metastable helium is also suitable for exploring other fundamental topics in quantum optics such particle/wave duality. The notion of complementarity stimulated long running philosophical discussions about how apparently mutually exclusive behaviours can coexist, which culminated in Wheeler devising his famous ‘delayed choice’ gedankenexperiment. A proposed experimental method to realise Wheeler’s experiment with ultracold atoms is discussed, and preliminary measurements presented which indicate that the completion of this experiment could be achieved in the near future. Not only is this of interest in its own right, but the implementation of this experiment has also developed techniques which may enable further studies in quantum atom optics such as investigations of the Hong-Ou-Mandel effect and quantum entanglement with massive particles.
This thesis deals with the measurement of the quantum intensity correlations in gases of metastable Helium. The measurement has been performed on thermal gases of bosonic 4He and fermionic 3He, as well as on Bose-Einstein condensates. In 1956, Robert Hanbury Brown et Richard Twiss measured the correlation between photons emitted from a single thermal source. The consequently demonstrated that the photons emitted by such a source tend to arrive grouped on a detector. This bunching characterises bosons from a non-coherent source. Fermions show an anti-bunching behaviour in the same conditions. By using metastable Helium atoms, that can be detected individually through the use of micro-channel plates, we have been able to show a similar bunching of bosons 4He from thermal sources around the microkelvin. As expected, the coherence of the Bose-Einstein condensates did not produce a particular correlation. The measurement on thermal gases of fermionic 3He has demonstrated the anti-bunching. Particular effort has been employed in describing the micro-channel plates based delay-line detector, the key to the experiment.
The rapid development of quantum technologies has driven a revolution in related research areas such as quantum computation and communication, and quantum materials. The first prototypes of functional quantum devices are beginning to appear, frequently created using ensembles of atoms, which allow the observation of sensitive, quantum effects, and have important applications in quantum simulation and matter wave interferometry. This modern text offers a self-contained introduction to the fundamentals of quantum atom optics and atomic many-body matter wave systems. Assuming a familiarity with undergraduate quantum mechanics, this book will be accessible for graduate students and early career researchers moving into this important new field. A detailed description of the underlying theory of quantum atom optics is given, before development of the key, quantum, technological applications, such as atom interferometry, quantum simulation, quantum metrology, and quantum computing.