Interferometry with Interacting Bose-Einstein Condensates in a Double-Well Potential

Zhao-Xian Yu, Zhi-Yong Jiao

Carlo Ottaviani, V. Ahufinger, R. Corbalán +1 more

Bose Einstein condensates (BECs) in double well potentials have drawn a lot of attention for the possibilities they offer to study fundamental quantum mechanical effects at the macroscopic level as well as for potential applications like interferometry, high precision measurements or thermometry. In contrast to Josephson junctions realized in superconductors and superfluids, in BEC the interatomic interactions play a crucial role leading to anharmonic Josephson oscillations, if the initial population imbalance of the two wells is below a critical value, and to macroscopic quantum self-trapping i.e, inhibition of large amplitude Josephson oscillations above the threshold for the population imbalance. In this paper, a novel technique to adiabatically control of BEC in a double-well potential is proposed. The adiabatic dynamics of a BEC in a double well potential can be described in terms of a dark variable resulting from a combination of the population imbalance and the spatial atomic coherence.

M. Fattori, Benjamin Deissler, Chiara D’Errico +8 more

S Benel, Sandra Babu, Simon A. Haine +1 more

This work presents a numerical study of a tunnelingbased interferometer implemented using a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) confined in a static double-well potential, where the condensate dynamics are simulated using the one-dimensional Gross-Pitaevskii equation to capture the essential mean-field behavior. By carefully configuring the central barrier parameters, the double well is engineered to act as a coherent matterwave beam splitter. A relative phase is introduced between the two arms of the interferometer, enabling the extraction of phase information through interference. We analyze the resulting interference contrast to determine the best barrier configurations that allow the system to function effectively as an interferometer. It was found that the interferometric contrast remains robust under realistic fluctuations in the barrier parameters, confirming experimental feasibility. Using a fixed barrier for both the splitting and recombination steps, we avoid the need to dynamically ramp the barrier, as in other approaches. This allows us to realize a simple and experimentally accessible interferometry scheme in the double-well potential.

Yong-il Shin, A. E. Leanhardt, Thomas A. Pasquini +5 more

Yong-il Shin, Michele Saba, Thomas A. Pasquini +3 more

A trapped-atom interferometer was demonstrated using gaseous Bose-Einstein condensates coherently split by deforming an optical single-well potential into a double-well potential. The relative phase between the two condensates was determined from the spatial phase of the matter wave interference pattern formed upon releasing the condensates from the separated potential wells. Coherent phase evolution was observed for condensates held separated by 13 microm for up to 5 ms and was controlled by applying ac Stark shift potentials to either of the two separated condensates.