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Physical Review A

Atomic multiwave interferometer for Aharonov-Casher-phase measurements

Min-Kang Zhou, Ke Zhang, Xiao‐Chun Duan, Yi Ke, Cheng-Gang Shao, Zhong-Kun Hu

Published Feb 24, 2016• 6 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We present an atomic multiwave interferometer with magnetic sublevels to precisely determine the Aharonov-Casher (AC) geometric phase. Simulations show that this interferometer has sharper fringes than a normal two-wave interferometer, which means a higher phase resolution can be achieved. Moreover, atoms evolving in a single hyperfine structure state make the interferometer insensitive to the dc Stark phase shift. This dc Stark shift is one of the main noise sources in AC phase measurements. The constraint of the photon rest mass is also discussed when using this atomic interferometer to measure the Aharonov-Casher phase.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.93.023641

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We present an atomic multiwave interferometer with magnetic sublevels to precisely determine the Aharonov-Casher (AC) geometric phase. Simulations show that this interferometer has sharper fringes than a normal two-wave interferometer, which means a higher phase resolution can be achieved. Moreover, atoms evolving in a single hyperfine structure state make the interferometer insensitive to the dc Stark phase shift. This dc Stark shift is one of the main noise sources in AC phase measurements. The constraint of the photon rest mass is also discussed when using this atomic interferometer to measure the Aharonov-Casher phase.
An atomic polarizing white-color interferometer composed of the wave packets in the m=+1m=+1m=+1 and $m=\ensuremath{-}1$ states of the excited 3P1{}^{3}{P}_{1}3P1​ state of Ca, has been developed using a thermal atomic beam excited by a pair of two resonant lights at two separate zones under a homogeneous magnetic field. The interferometer generated the Ramsey fringes as a detuning of the rf frequency between two resonant lights from the Zeeman-frequency shift, while it generates white-color interference fringes as a detuning of laser frequency. The interferometer was used for the direct and short-time measurement of the Aharonov-Casher phase by removing the main part of dc Stark phase shift and without the influence of the frequency fluctuation of a laser. The measured dependence of the Aharonov-Casher phase on the electric field agreed with the predicted one within a relative uncertainty of 2.9%. The tensor polarizability in the 3P1{}^{3}{P}_{1}3P1​ state was determined to be ${\ensuremath{\alpha}}_{2}=2.623\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}0.015 \mathrm{k}\mathrm{H}\mathrm{z}/(\mathrm{k}\mathrm{V}/\mathrm{c}\mathrm{m}{)}^{2}$ from the frequency shift between the m=+1m=+1m=+1 and $m=\ensuremath{-}1$ states.
A multiwave atom interferometer using multiple Wannier-Stark states is experimentally realized in a vertical optical lattice. Atoms are coherently driven by stimulated Raman transitions into a superposition of several adjacent lattice sites, in which they evolve at multiples of Bloch frequency in the same internal state to form an interference pattern. We observe coherent evolution for more than 500 Bloch periods. The noise analysis shows that the phase resolution of this interferometer is detection noise limited. This multiwave interferometer could be a potential instrument for gravimetry and short-range forces measurement.
Summary form only given. The field of atom interferometry is experiencing rapid progress. Atom interferometers have been used to determine topological phase shifts such as the Aharonov-Bohm or Aharonov-Casher effects. Both two beam and more recently multiple beam atom interferometers have been realized. We report on an investigation of the electric (or scalar) Aharonov-Bohm effect in a multiple beam Ramsey experiment. The topological phase shift leads to collapse and revival of the fringe pattern. In a first interaction region cesium atoms are optically pumped into a dark coherent superposition of the magnetic quantum numbers m/sub F/=-4, -2, 0, 2 and 4 of the 6S/sub 1/2/ (F=4) ground state. The coherent superposition is probed after a time T in a second interaction region. When the atoms are irradiated in between the Ramsey interactions by an additional linearly polarized light field 400 MHz blue detuned to the F=4/spl rarr/F'=4 transition of the cesium D1 line, the induced AC Stark shift increases quadratically with the magnetic quantum number. The laser field coupling to the induced atomic dipole moment causes-in the absence of any classical forces-an electric Aharonov-Bohm phase shift.
Atoms in magnetically sensitive sublevels constitute a natural sensor for absolute magnetic field measurements, which are explored here to form an optical Ramsey interferometer for determining the magnetic field distribution. An optical Ramsey atom interferometer provides a convenient way to map a magnetic field in vacuum. In comparison with the often used Raman spectroscopy method, a Ramsey interferometer can not only improve the sensitivity, but also dramatically suppress the contribution of the ac Stark effect. Furthermore, in this work, the magnetically sensitive atoms are velocity-selected, which improves the spatial resolution for the magnetometer as well as the contrast of the Ramsey fringes. A short-term sensitivity of 1.4nT/Hz1/21.4\phantom{\rule{0.2em}{0ex}}{\mathrm{nT/Hz}}^{1/2}1.4nT/Hz1/2 for magnetic field measurement is finally achieved even with an interrogation time as short as $500\phantom{\rule{0.2em}{0ex}}\ensuremath{\mu}\mathrm{s}$. The presented approach for absolute magnetic field measurement is expected to find wide applications in atom-interferometry-based precision measurements.
We propose an experiment that would produce and measure a large Aharonov-Casher (AC) phase in a solid-state system under macroscopic motion. A diamond crystal is mounted on a spinning disk in the presence of a uniform electric field. Internal magnetic states of a single nitrogen-vacancy (N-V)(\text{N-}V)(N-V) defect, replacing interferometer trajectories, are coherently controlled by microwave pulses. The AC phase shift is manifested as a relative phase, of up to 17 radians, between components of a superposition of magnetic substates, which is two orders of magnitude larger than that measured in any other atom-scale quantum system.
We constructed an optical Ramsey atomic interferometer, which has a resolution of 8 fm for the difference between arms of the interferometer, and used it to examine the phase shift due to the ac Stark effect of the excited state of the intercombination line (1{(}^{1}(1S0{\mathit{S}}_{0}S0​${\mathrm{\ensuremath{-}}}^{3}$P1{\mathit{P}}_{1}P1​) of Ca. It was clearly observed that the phase shift is in proportion to the field power and in inverse proportion to the detuning frequency of the laser. The proportionality coefficient obtained was in good agreement with the theoretical one.