Chapter 7 Interference phenomena

Jerry B. Marion, Mark A. Heald

Adilet Imambekov

In this thesis we investigate strongly correlated phenomena in the field of ultracold atomic gases. Chapter 2 addresses a question of the insulating phases of cold spin-one bosonic particles with antiferromagnetic interactions, such as 23 Na, in optical lattices. Magnetic properties of the ground state in the insulating regime are studied using various techniques. Chapter 3 considers a one dimensional interacting Bose-Fermi mixture with equal masses of bosons and fermions, and with equal repulsive interactions between Bose-Fermi and Bose-Bose particles. Properties of such mixture are studied using exact Bethe-ansatz techniques. Chapter 4 deals with certain phenomena which appear in the experiments with imbalanced fermionic mixtures in strongly anisotropic traps. Chapter 5 gives a comprehensive review of interference phenomena, analyzing effects which contribute to the reduction of the interference fringe contrast in matter interferometers. iii Contents

Thomas Ihn

Beyond the basic interference effects introduced in Chapter 14, further interesting interference phenomena exist in semiconductor nanostructures, the discussion of which requires more prior knowledge. This chapter discusses the Fano effect in nanostructure transport that has been found in a number of very different experiments. Furthermore, it discusses experiments that measure the transmission phase in addition to the transmission probability using interferometric arrangements. Finally, the chapter returns to the topic of decoherence, and introduces experiments aiming at controlled decoherence of quantum states. This topic requires knowledge of interference and the basics of decoherence, and incorporates ideas of shot noise, the Aharonov–Bohm effect, the quantum Hall effect, double quantum dot physics, and the theory of quantum measurement.

L. H. Wei

Richard B. Schulz