Probing entanglement in a spinor condensate near the single atom level
An Qu, Bertrand Evrard, Jean Dalibard, Fabrice Gerbier
Abstract
Using parametric conversion induced by a Shapiro-type resonance, we produce and characterize a two-mode squeezed vacuum state in a sodium spin 1 Bose-Einstein condensate. Spin changing collisions generate correlated pairs of atoms in the $m=\pm 1$ Zeeman states out of a condensate with initially all atoms in $m=0$. A novel fluorescence imaging technique with sensitivity $\Delta N \sim 1.6$ atom enables us to demonstrate the role of quantum fluctuations in the initial dynamics and to characterize the full distribution of the final state, which reaches a squeezing level of $16.8\,$dB.