Physical Review A
Long storage time of collective coherence in an optically trapped Bose-Einstein condensate
Yutaka Yoshikawa, Kazuyuki Nakayama, Yoshio Torii, Takahiro Kuga
Abstract
Our recent work has demonstrated the superradiant writing and reading of collective coherence in a Bose-Einstein condensate [Phys. Rev. Lett. 99, 220407 (2007)]. This time we report the drastic improvement of the storage time realized by loading the atoms into an optical dipole trap, wherein an unfavorable spin-dependent phase shift and spatial diffusion of atoms can be suppressed. The measured storage time was $0.57(2)\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}\mathrm{ms}$, which is limited by the temporal variation of atomic momentum due to harmonic oscillations in the trap.