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Physical Review Letters

Measurement-induced diffraction and interference of atoms

Pippa Storey, Matthew J. Collett, Daniel F. Walls

Published Jan 27, 1992• 234 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The position of an atom passing through a standard light wave is localized by making a quadrature phase measurement on the light field. This localization can be thought of as the creation of a virtual slit (or slits) for the atom by the field measurement. Diffraction and interference behavior may be observed in the far field.
DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.68.472

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We consider atoms traversing a cavity filled with an optical field. When the atoms are well detuned from the optical resonance the output momentum distribution of the atoms is found to be a sensitive probe of the photon statistics of the light field. Near resonance spontaneous emission smears the diffractive peaks. We obtain a good fit to the experimental data of Gould et at. (1991). As the atoms pass through the optical field they impart a position-dependent phase shift to the field. By making a quadrature phase measurement on the optical field a position measurement of the atom is achieved. We show that it is possible to prepare the atom in a 'contractive state' which beats the standard quantum limit for position measurements.
Although interferometry's earliest and most familiar use is with photons, the discovery of matter-wave (deBroglie-wave) interference for electrons demanded the development of quantum mechanics. Since then, matter-wave interferometry has been performed with neutrons, Cooper electron-pairs, and most recently, with whole atoms and diatomic molecules. This talk describes our recent high-flux atom interferometry experiments using the generalized Talbot-vonLau effect. Our interferometer consists of a sequence of three planar vacuum-slit diffraction gratings, microfabricated from silicon nitride membranes. DeBroglie-wave interference fringes are sensed by measuring the transmission of potassium atoms on a hot- wire as a function of grating relative position. Different spatial Fourier components (up to sixth) in the diffraction pattern are resonant in the interferometer at different atomic velocities (i.e., at different wavelengths). When a laser cooled slow atomic beam is incident, various different diffraction patterns are observed as a function of atomic velocity. In an alternative `Heisenberg Microscope' configuration an incident thermal beam produces a velocity average over different fringe Fourier components. AC modulated weak laser light passing through the interferometer interacts selectively with atoms at a specific velocity. The associated fringe pattern is then ac modulated and revealed by its selective destruction.
We report on an experiment with polarized atoms passing a standing light wave, where the atom's position is encoded (entangled) with the excitation amplitude of two long lived electronic states. Position information can be obtained a posteriori by measuring the electronic state. If this measurement is performed, the atom is localized in an array of virtual slits. This gives rise to diffraction of the atomic de Broglie waves from a measurement induced amplitude grating, thus showing the back action onto the momentum due to the localization. We further demonstrate experimentally that the encoding can be totally erased.