A quantum pump is a device that transports particles through a circuit with localized time-varying potentials, and without the need for an external applied voltage or chemical potential. Quantum pumping was originally proposed in the context of electron transport in nanowires, but has proven difficult to implement. The ultracold atom approach represents a possible route around the current experimental bottleneck. We present an experiment to study 1D quantum mechanical scattering by an amplitude-modulated barrier. This experiment represents a first step toward implementing a quantum pump for ultracold atoms based on two such barriers modulated out of phase with one another. A single oscillating barrier imparts or subtracts kinetic energy in discrete amounts from the scattered atoms. In this manner, the energy spectrum of the scattered atoms resembles a comb with a tooth spacing proportional to the oscillation frequency of the barrier. This effect is analogous to the frequency modulation of a radio wave to add sidebands to a carrier frequency, where the carrier is the kinetic energy of ultracold atoms and the oscillating barrier provides the modulating signal. Numerical simulations of the scattering process confirm this basic scattering picture. We present dual chamber, dual-species a atom chip apparatus that produces quasi-pure Rubidium-87 Bose-Einstein condensates (BEC) of 10,000 atoms used to study the quantum scattering dynamics. The proposed experiment operates by releasing a BEC from a relaxed magnetic chip trap and directing it horizontally towards a tightly focused laser beam that serves as an oscillating barrier. A magnetic field gradient provided by is used to control the vertical motion of the BEC. Detection is carried out with a time of flight technique to resolve discrete atomic packet sidebands. This method can be used to study momentum sideband generation with a BEC in the presence of no or weak interactions. Dark-ground imaging can be used to detect small atom number BECs, which will have the benefit of weaker interactions.
A quantum pump is a device that transports particles through a circuit with localized time-varying potentials, and without the need for an external applied voltage or chemical potential. Quantum pumping was originally proposed in the context of electron transport in nanowires, but has proven difficult to implement. The ultracold atom approach represents a possible route around the current experimental bottleneck. We present an experiment to study 1D quantum mechanical scattering by an amplitude-modulated barrier. This experiment represents a first step toward implementing a quantum pump for ultracold atoms based on two such barriers modulated out of phase with one another. A single oscillating barrier imparts or subtracts kinetic energy in discrete amounts from the scattered atoms. In this manner, the energy spectrum of the scattered atoms resembles a comb with a tooth spacing proportional to the oscillation frequency of the barrier. This effect is analogous to the frequency modulation of a radio wave to add sidebands to a carrier frequency, where the carrier is the kinetic energy of ultracold atoms and the oscillating barrier provides the modulating signal. Numerical simulations of the scattering process confirm this basic scattering picture. We present dual chamber, dual-species a atom chip apparatus that produces quasi-pure Rubidium-87 Bose-Einstein condensates (BEC) of 10,000 atoms used to study the quantum scattering dynamics. The proposed experiment operates by releasing a BEC from a relaxed magnetic chip trap and directing it horizontally towards a tightly focused laser beam that serves as an oscillating barrier. A magnetic field gradient provided by is used to control the vertical motion of the BEC. Detection is carried out with a time of flight technique to resolve discrete atomic packet sidebands. This method can be used to study momentum sideband generation with a BEC in the presence of no or weak interactions. Dark-ground imaging can be used to detect small atom number BECs, which will have the benefit of weaker interactions.
Quantum pumping is a method of transporting particles through a circuit without an external applied voltage or chemical potential, but instead with localized time-varying potentials.Ballistic quantum pumping has been theorized in mesoscopic solid state sys tems, but experimental verifications have been challenging due to the capacitive coupling and rectification inherent to electronic systems.Using ultracold neutral atoms to test and verify the theoretical predictions of quantum pumping reduces these challenges while providing the advantages of easy confinement and manipulation, a high degree of coher ence, and bosons as well as fermions.In addition, ultracold atoms allow smooth tunability between classical thermal gases and quantum gases.Here, we design, build, characterize, and optimize a dual-species experimental apparatus capable of quantum pumping exper iments with Bose-Einstein condensates on an atom chip.We produce quasi-pure 87Rb Bose-Einstein condensates of ~ 104 atoms and successfully laser-cool 39K.We lay the experimental groundwork for quantum pumping experiments with ultracold atoms and characterize the classical dynamics of the system.These classical dynamics are supported with theoretical modeling that we have developed to compare the dramatic differences between the classical and quantum results of a double barrier turnstile pump as well as its single barrier building blocks.
This thesis is primarily a comprehensive discussion of the development of two experimental studies: the quantum transport and effects of heating of ultracold atoms. It specifically provides details of the manipulation and control of ultracold atoms in magnetic waveguides, optical lattices, and optical billiards. The design, construction, and implementation of experimental apparati are also outlined and additional experimental tests are summarized, including the realization of a macroscopic transport (> 20 cm) system for ultracold atoms and transmission of ultracold atoms through a random optical potential. The first experiment is a study of the quantum transport for atoms confined in a periodic potential. These results include a comparison made of thermal and BEC initial conditions. Here, observation of ballistic transport is made for all values of well depth and initial conditions, and the expansion rates for thermal atoms are shown to be in excellent agreement with a singleparticle model. For weak wells (V0/ER ≤ 6), the expansion of the BEC is also in excellent agreement with single-particle theory, using an effective temperature model based on single (non-interacting) particle theory. For deep wells (V0/ER ≥ 6), a crossover is observed to a new regime for the BEC case, indicating the importance of interactions on quantum transport. The second experiment is a study of the effect of different heating rates on a dilute Bose gas confined in a quasi-1D finite, leaky box. An optical kicked-rotor is used to transfer energy to the atoms while two repulsive optical beams are used to confine the atoms. The average energy of the atoms is localized after a large number of kicks and the system reaches a nonequilibrium steady state. A numerical simulation of the experimental data suggests that the localization is due to energetic atoms leaking over the barrier. Our data also indicates a correlation between collisions and the destruction of the BoseEinstein condensate fraction and an exponential decay in phase space density.
We describe a proof-of-principle experiment on a fully permanent magnet atom chip. We study ultracold atoms and produce a Bose-Einstein condensate. The magnetic trap is loaded efficiently by adiabatic transport of a magnetic trap via the application of uniform external fields. Radio frequency spectroscopy is used for in-trap analysis and to determine the temperature of the atomic cloud. The formation of a Bose-Einstein condensate is observed in time-of-flight images and as a narrow peak appearing in the radio frequency spectrum.
In this thesis I discuss work that has been carried out on the dynamics of a Bose Einstein condensate of Rb 87 produced near an atom chip. A Bose Einstein Condensate (BEC) is a quantum state of matter where a single quantum state becomes occupied by a macroscopic number of identical Bosons. In our case this is achieved by cooling a system of trapped identical rubidium 87 atoms to its ground state. To reach temperatures of condensation we initially laser cool atoms from room temperature, before loading them into a magnetic trap. The magnetic trap is produced through a combination of uniform magnetic fields from coils outside our vacuum chamber and currents running through wires on an atom chip. The atom chip is a microfabricated device, produced by a coating a silicon chip with a thin layer of gold and etching wires into it. Together, these fields create a magnetic field minimum 120μm from the surface of the chip which can be used to confine low field seeking hyperfine states of the atom in an elongated harmonic trap. Once the atoms are confined in the magnetic trap we used force evaporative cooling out to reach the phase space densities required for Bose Einstein condensation. The BEC is used to investigate the relative dynamics between the fraction of the atoms in the condensate to those not in the condensate. Our atom chip provided a suitable environment to investigate this due to fragmentation of the magnetic potential close to the chip. Small imperfections in the wires on our atom chip mean that the trapping potential isn’t smooth. Small regions of higher trapping frequency - or fragments - are formed. Due to the small size of these fragments it is possible to find a position where a condensate can form in the fragment, and see a potential of high frequency, whereas a non-condensed atom will see a lower frequency potential. We exploit this to set the condensed fraction moving relative to the non condensed part and investigate the subsequent damping of their motion relative to each other.
The first successful experimental realization of a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) in 1995 sparked a still growing research activity that in the meantime has led to beautiful and surprising results, such as the interference of matter waves [4], the Mott-superfluid phase transition [49] or the direct observation of Anderson localization of matter waves [10]. The strong interest in BECs arises, among others, from the possibility to investigate known but hard to study quantum systems on a rather macroscopic scale: for example one can load ultra-cold bosons into an optical lattice created by a standing light wave, and thereby simulate a solid state device. When it comes to a measurement on the BEC, however, essentially all measurement techniques result in the destruction of the condensate: for example in the so called “time of flight method” the optical lattice is switched off to observe the expansion of the trapped atoms and thereby directly visualize their momentum distribution, which highlights the condensed component [11]. In this thesis we elaborate on a means to probe a Bose-Einstein condensate from outside, with a scattering particle. The interaction between the probe particle and the bosons allows energy exchange between them, i.e., this setup includes inelastic scattering. After the scattering process, the condensate is still confined in the optical lattice and can therefore be used for further investigations. Of course, this method of probing a BEC is only then a serious alternative if the properties of the BEC can be inferred from the scattering signal. Besides outlining the scattering formalism, the central aim of this work is to show how the properties of the BEC can be deduced from those quantities accessible in a scattering experiment, like for example the transmission or the inelastic cross section. The other, equally strong motivation of this work concerns the signature of the interaction between the bosons in the scattering quantities. The dynamics of an analog classical system depends strongly on the interaction strength, which can induce a complex structure of the underlying phase space like, e.g., the appearance of a separatrix or even the emergence of chaotic dynamics in a globally mixed regular-chaotic phase space. We are interested to which extent such phase-space metamorphosis is reflected in the properties of the scattering particle. Currently light scattering (Bragg spectroscopy) on an optical lattice [78, 77] or rather on an optical lattice embedded into a cavity [62,68,19] is under intense investigation. These efforts predominantly aim at a characterization of the Mott-superfluid transition by specific scattering properties. In the present thesis we focus on condensates loaded in two and three lattice sites, with a large number of bosons. These systems exhibit a diversity of important physical effects (as we will see below) and thus are of paradigmatic relevance for a detailed understanding of multiparticle quantum dynamics in periodic potentials.
The transport of quantum particles in non ideal material media (eg the conduction of electrons in an imperfect crystal) is strongly affected by scattering from impurities of the medium. Even for a weak disorder, semi-classical theories, such as those based on the Boltzmann equation for matter-waves scattering from the impurities, often fail to describe transport properties and full quantum approaches are necessary. The properties of the quantum systems are of fundamental interest as they show intriguing and non-intuitive phenomena that are not yet fully understood such as Anderson localization, percolation, disorder-driven quantum phase transitions and the corresponding Bose-glass or spin-glass phases. Understanding quantum transport in amorphous solids is one of the main issues in this context, related to electric and thermal conductivities. Ultracold atomic gases can now be considered to revisit the problem of quantum conductivity and quantum transport under unique control possibilities. Dilute atomic Bose-Einstein condensates (BEC) and degenerate Fermi gases (DFG) are produced routinely taking advantage of the recent progress in cooling and trapping of neutral atoms. Transport has been widely investigated in controlled potentials with no defects, for instance periodic potentials (optical lattices). Controlled disordered potentials can also be produced with various techniques such as the use of magnetic traps designed on atomic chips with rough wires, the use of localized impurity atoms, the use of radio-frequency fields or the use of optical potentials. This recently lead to the observation of the Anderson Localisation of a BEC and the measurement of the diffusion coefficient of a 2D gaz in the presence of disorder.