Atom interferometers with weak-measurement path detectors and their quantum mechanical analysis*

Abstract

According to the orthodox interpretation of quantum physics, wave-particle duality (WPD) is the intrinsic property of all massive microscopic particles. All gedanken or realistic experiments based on atom interferometers (AI) have so far upheld the principle of WPD, either by the mechanism of the Heisenberg’s position-momentum uncertainty relation or by quantum entanglement. In this paper, we propose and make a systematic quantum mechanical analysis of several schemes of weak-measurement atom interferometer (WM-AI) and compare them with the historical schemes of strong-measurement atom interferometer (SM-AI), such as Einstein’s recoiling slit and Feynman’s light microscope. As the critical part of these WM-AI setups, a weak-measurement path detector (WM-PD) deliberately interacting with the atomic internal electronic quantum states is designed and used to probe the which-path information of the atom, while only inducing negligible perturbation of the atomic center-of-mass motion. Another instrument that is used to directly interact with the atomic center-of-mass while being insensitive to the internal electronic quantum states is used to monitor the atomic center-of-mass interference pattern. Two typical schemes of WM-PD are considered. The first is the micromaser-cavity path detector, which allows us to probe the spontaneously emitted microwave photon from the incoming Rydberg atom in its excited electronic state and record unanimously the which-path information of the atom. The second is the optical-lattice Bragg-grating path detector, which can split the incoming atom beam into two different directions as determined by the internal electronic state and thus encode the which-path information of the atom into the internal states of the atom. We have used standard quantum mechanics to analyze the evolution of the atomic center-of-mass and internal electronic state wave function by directly solving Schrödinger’s equation for the composite atom-electron-photon system in these WM-AIs . We have also compared our analysis with the theoretical and experimental studies that have been presented in the previous literature. The results show that the two sets of instruments can work separately, collectively, and without mutual exclusion to enable simultaneous observation of both wave and particle nature of the atoms to a much higher level than the historical SM-AIs, while avoiding degradation from Heisenberg’s uncertainty relation and quantum entanglement. We have further investigated the space–time evolution of the internal electronic quantum state, as well as the combined atom–detector system and identified the microscopic origin and role of quantum entanglement, as emphasized in numerous previous studies. Based on these physics insights and theoretical analyses, we have proposed several new WM-AI schemes that can help to elucidate the puzzling physics of the WPD of the atoms. The principle of WM-AI scheme and quantum mechanical analyses made in this work can be directly extended to examine the principle of WPD for other massive particles.