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arXiv:cond-mat/0110555 · Physical Review A

Transverse mode of an atom laser

Thomas Busch, Michael Köhl, Tilman Esslinger, Klaus Mølmer

Published Apr 5, 2002• 29 citations
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Abstract

The transverse mode of an atom laser beam that is outcoupled from a Bose--Einstein condensate is investigated and is found to be strongly determined by the mean-field interaction of the laser beam with the condensate. For repulsive interactions, the condensate acts as a diverging lens for the outcoupled atoms, and transverse interference fringes in the atomic beam are predicted due to the coherent addition of amplitudes for atoms emitted from different regions in the condensate. This effect can be used to investigate the transverse coherence of an atom laser beam.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.65.043615

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The transverse mode of an atom laser beam that is outcoupled from a Bose--Einstein condensate is investigated and is found to be strongly determined by the mean-field interaction of the laser beam with the condensate. For repulsive interactions, the condensate acts as a diverging lens for the outcoupled atoms, and transverse interference fringes in the atomic beam are predicted due to the coherent addition of amplitudes for atoms emitted from different regions in the condensate. This effect can be used to investigate the transverse coherence of an atom laser beam.
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Using the unique detection properties offered by metastable helium atoms we have produced high resolution images of the transverse spatial profiles of an atom laser beam. We observe fringes on the beam, resulting from quantum mechanical interference between atoms that start from rest at different transverse locations within the outcoupling surface and end up at a later time with different velocities at the same transverse position. Numerical simulations in the low output-coupling limit give good quantitative agreement with our experimental data.
Atom lasers have been demonstrated in both pulsed and semi-continuous modes. The dynamics of these devices is predicted to be dramatically different to the optical laser due to fundamental differences between the two types of boson fields, however to date it is the similarities that have been emphasized. Here we show how the atom laser dynamics are strongly affected by coupling of the output beam back to the condensate. Typically research in the field of Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) 1 relates to studies of fundamental properties, such as collective modes 2 or to the response of the BEC to external stimuli 3. In contrast, the atom laser is one of the most promising technologies to arise from BEC, being the di-rect atomic equivalent of the optical laser 4. Mewes et al. 5 demonstrated the first atom laser, based on the application of pulsed radio-frequency (RF) fields to induce controlled spin flips from magnetically trapped to un-trapped states of a Bose-Einstein condensate. Later it was shown by Hagley et al. 6 that a pulsed Raman out-coupling could be used to achieve a quasi-continuous multi-state atomic beam. Bloch et al. 7 achieved con-tinuous RF out-coulping for up to 100ms, producing a single state atom laser beam, and showed that this beam could be coherently manipulated in direct analogy to the optical laser 8. These experiments, and others 9,10, have conclusively demonstrated that the outcoupling process can be made coherent. They have also demonstrated a number of other similarities be-tween the optical and atomic lasers such as high flux and low divergence of the output beam. In all these works, the similarities between the two sys-tems have been emphasized, however, ultimately it is the differences such as mass and wavelength that will lead to applications of the atom laser. 1
We analyze the outcoupling of a matter wave into a guide by a time-dependent spilling of the atoms from an initially trapped Bose-Einstein condensate. This process yields intrinsically a breakdown of the adiabatic condition that triggers the outcoupling of the wave function. Our analysis of the time-dependent engineering and manipulation of condensates in momentum space in this context enables us to work out the limits due to interactions in the mode quality of a guided-atom laser. This study is consistent with recent experimental observations of low transverse excitations of guided-atom lasers and suggests (i) an optimal strategy to realize such quasimonomode guided-atom lasers with, in addition, the lowest possible longitudinal velocity dispersion or alternatively (ii) a strategy for engineering the atomic flux of the atom laser.
We report on the observation of interference of a series of atom lasers. A comblike array of atomic beams is generated by outcoupling atoms from distinct Bose-Einstein condensates confined in the different sites of a mesoscopic optical lattice. The observed interference signal arises from the spatial beating of the overlapped atom laser beams, which is monitored over a range corresponding to 2ms2\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}\mathrm{ms}2ms of freefall time. The relative de Broglie frequencies and phases of the atom lasers were measured.