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Spin self-rephasing and very long coherence times in trapped atomic ensembles

P. Rosenbusch

Published Jan 1, 2011• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We perform Ramsey spectroscopy on the ground state of ultra-cold 87Rb atoms magnetically trapped on a chip in the Knudsen regime. Field inhomogeneities over the sample should limit the 1/e contrast decay time to about 3 s, while decay times of 58 ± 12 s are actually observed. We explain this surprising result by a spin self-rephasing mechanism induced by the identical spin rotation effect originating from the exchange interaction. We propose a theory of this synchronization mechanism and obtain good agreement with the experimental observations. The effect is general and may appear in other physical systems.

DOI
10.1364/qels.2011.qtuo5

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We perform Ramsey spectroscopy on the ground state of ultra-cold 87Rb atoms magnetically trapped on a chip in the Knudsen regime. Field inhomogeneities over the sample should limit the 1/e contrast decay time to about 3 s, while decay times of 58 ± 12 s are actually observed. We explain this surprising result by a spin self-rephasing mechanism induced by the identical spin rotation effect originating from the exchange interaction. We propose a theory of this synchronization mechanism and obtain good agreement with the experimental observations. The effect is general and may appear in other physical systems.
We perform Ramsey spectroscopy on the ground state of ultracold 87Rb atoms magnetically trapped on a chip in the Knudsen regime. Field inhomogeneities over the sample should limit the 1/e contrast decay time to about 3 s, while decay times of 58 ± 12 s are actually observed. We explain this surprising result by a spin self-rephasing mechanism induced by the identical spin rotation effect originating from particle indistinguishability. We propose a theory of this synchronization mechanism and obtain good agreement with the experimental observations. The effect is general and may appear in other physical systems.
We perform Ramsey spectroscopy on the ground state of ultracold 87 Rb atoms magnetically trapped on a chip in the Knudsen regime.Field inhomogeneities over the sample should limit the 1=e contrast decay time to about 3 s, while decay times of 58 Æ 12 s are actually observed.We explain this surprising result by a spin self-rephasing mechanism induced by the identical spin rotation effect originating from particle indistinguishability.We propose a theory of this synchronization mechanism and obtain good agreement with the experimental observations.The effect is general and may appear in other physical systems.
We perform Ramsey interferometry on an ultracold ^{87}Rb ensemble confined in an optical dipole trap. We use a π pulse set at the middle of the interferometer to restore the coherence of the spin ensemble by canceling out phase inhomogeneities and creating a spin echo in the contrast. However, for high atomic densities, we observe the opposite behavior: the π pulse accelerates the dephasing of the spin ensemble leading to a faster contrast decay of the interferometer. We understand this phenomenon as a competition between the spin-echo technique and an exchange-interaction driven spin self-rephasing mechanism based on the identical spin rotation effect. Our experimental data are well reproduced by a numerical model.
We observe the coherence of an interacting two-component Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) surviving for seconds in a trapped Ramsey interferometer. Mean-field-driven collective oscillations of two components lead to periodic dephasing and rephasing of condensate wave functions with a slow decay of the interference fringe visibility. We apply spin echo synchronous with the self-rephasing of the condensate to reduce the influence of state-dependent atom losses, significantly enhancing the visibility up to 0.750.750.75 at the evolution time of 1.51.51.5 s. Mean-field theory consistently predicts higher visibility than experimentally observed values. We quantify the effects of classical and quantum noise and infer a coherence time of 2.82.82.8 s for a trapped condensate of $5.5\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{10}^{4}$ interacting atoms.
We present a compact atomic clock interrogating ultracold 87Rb magnetically trapped on an atom chip. Very long coherence times sustained by spin self-rephasing allow us to interrogate the atomic transition with 85% contrast at 5 s Ramsey time. The clock exhibits a fractional frequency stability of 5.8×10−135.8\times 10^{-13}5.8×10−13 at 1 s and is likely to integrate into the 1×10−151\times10^{-15}1×10−15 range in less than a day. A detailed analysis of 7 noise sources explains the measured frequency stability. Fluctuations in the atom temperature (0.4 nK shot-to-shot) and in the offset magnetic field (5×10−65\times10^{-6}5×10−6 relative fluctuations shot-to-shot) are the main noise sources together with the local oscillator, which is degraded by the 30% duty cycle. The analysis suggests technical improvements to be implemented in a future second generation set-up. The results demonstrate the remarkable degree of technical control that can be reached in an atom chip experiment.