Physical Review A
Spatially entangled atomic deflections in twin-photon light beams
Gagik Yu. Kryuchkyan, Mihai Macovei, Christoph H. Keitel
Abstract
We investigate deflections, spatial entanglement, and localization of an atomic beam due to its interaction with two modes of a standing electromagnetic field in an optical cavity. It is demonstrated that the deflection properties of an atom passing through two crossed standing light waves are crucially modified when photon-number correlated states of light are used instead of independent waves. Depending on the atom-light interaction scheme, various periodic two-dimensional patterns in a subwavelength regime are reported.