Kluwer Academic Publishers eBooks
Theory Of A Pulsed RF Atom Laser
J. Schneider, Axel Schenzle
Abstract
An atom laser based on RF-outcoupling can be operated in a coherently pulsed way by using two radio frequencies. Such a two-mode atom laser can be described by coupled Gross-Pitaevskii equations which are valid for very low temperatures (T≈0). We have derived analytic expressions for the output rate and the visibility of the pulsed atomic beam in the weak coupling regime. A comparison between the analytical and numerical results shows a good agreement. This proves our assumption that the outcoupling process may be seen as the coherent outcoupling of two independent atomic beams. Though our model is only one-dimensional, we expect also a good agreement with the full 3D situation of experiment; the estimate for the value of the output rate might be only in the right order of magnitude16. Summarizing, the manipulation of trapped Bose condensates with electromagnetic waves opens a wide new area for the field of coherent atom optics.