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arXiv:cond-mat/0001301 · Physical Review A

Decoherence in Bose-Einstein condensates: Towards bigger and better Schrödinger cats

Diego A. R. Dalvit, Jacek Dziarmaga, Wojciech Hubert Zurek

Published Jun 13, 2000• 68 citations
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Abstract

We consider a quantum superposition of Bose-Einstein condensates (BEC's) in two immiscible internal states. A decoherence rate for the resulting Schr\"odinger cat is calculated and shown to be a significant threat to this macroscopic quantum superposition of BEC's. An experimental scenario is outlined where the decoherence rate due to the thermal cloud is dramatically reduced thanks to trap engineering and ``symmetrization'' of the environment, which allow the Schr\"odinger cat to be an approximate pointer state.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.62.013607

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We consider a quantum superposition of Bose-Einstein condensates (BEC's) in two immiscible internal states. A decoherence rate for the resulting Schr"odinger cat is calculated and shown to be a significant threat to this macroscopic quantum superposition of BEC's. An experimental scenario is outlined where the decoherence rate due to the thermal cloud is dramatically reduced thanks to trap engineering and ``symmetrization'' of the environment, which allow the Schr"odinger cat to be an approximate pointer state.
We consider quantum superposition states in Bose-Einstein condensates. A decoherence rate for the Schrödinger cat is calculated and shown to be a significant threat to this macroscopic quantum superposition of BEC's. An experimental scenario is outlined where the decoherence rate due to the thermal cloud is dramatically reduced thanks to trap engineering and "symmetrization" of the environment. We show that under the proposed scenario the Schroedinger cat belongs to an approximate decoherence-free pointer subspace. This paper is a simplified and more pedagogical version of our previous work, Phys.Rev. A62, 13607 (2000).
Quantum superpositions of macroscopically distinguishable states having distinct phases can be created with a Bose-Einstein condensate trapped in a periodic potential. The experimental signature is contained in the phase distribution of the interference patterns obtained after releasing the traps. Moreover, in the double-well case, this distribution exhibits a dramatic dependence on the parity of the total number of atoms. We finally show that, for single-well occupations up to a few hundred atoms, the macroscopic quantum superposition can be robust enough against decoherence to be experimentally revealable within current technology.
We study the possibility to create many-particle Schrödinger cat-like states by using a Feshbach resonance to reverse the sign of the scattering length of a Bose-Einstein condensate trapped in a double-well potential. To address the issue of experimental verification of coherence in the cat-like state, we study the revival of the initial condensate state in the presence of environmentally-induced decoherence. As a source of decoherence, we consider the interaction between the atoms and the electromagnetic vacuum, due to the polarization induced by an incident laser field. We find that the resulting decoherence is directly related to the rate at which spontaneously scattered photons carry away sufficient information to distinguish between the two atom-distributions which make-up the cat state. We show that for a 'perfect' cat-state, a single scattered photon will bring about a collapse of the superposition, while a less-than-perfect cat-like state can survive multiple scatterings before collapse occurs. In addition, we study the dephasing effect of atom-atom collisions on the cat-like states.
We propose and numerically validate a scheme for the realization of Schrödinger cat-like states in a two-component Bose-Einstein condensate, emphasizing their twinning across components under tunable intra- and inter-species interactions within the miscibility regime. Wigner phase-space analysis reveals sub-Planck-scale interference fringes, confirming the nonclassical character of the states and their potential utility in quantum-enhanced metrology. The dynamical response of the system to a weak linear gravitational-like perturbation further demonstrates cooperative enhancement: while the directly perturbed component retains its cat-like features, the coupled partner exhibits a pronounced population imbalance and a distinct phase-space rotation, providing a sensitive detection channel absent in single-component condensates. These results establish binary condensates as a versatile platform for engineering macroscopic quantum superpositions and exploiting their twinning dynamics for precision measurements.