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arXiv:cond-mat/0603772 · Physical Review A

Bose-Einstein-condensate interferometer with macroscopic arm separation

Óscar Viyuela García, Benjamin Deissler, K. J. Hughes, J. M. Reeves, Charles A. Sackett

Published Sep 11, 2006• 85 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

A Michelson interferometer using Bose-Einstein condensates is demonstrated with coherence times of up to $44\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}\mathrm{ms}$ and arm separations up to $180\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}\mathrm{\ensuremath{\mu}}\mathrm{m}$. This arm separation is larger than that observed for any previous atom interferometer. The device uses atoms weakly confined in a magnetic guide and the atomic motion is controlled using Bragg interactions with an off-resonant standing-wave laser beam.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.74.031601

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A Michelson interferometer using Bose-Einstein condensates is demonstrated with coherence times of up to 44ms44\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}\mathrm{ms}44ms and arm separations up to 180\ensuremathμm180\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}\mathrm{\ensuremath{\mu}}\mathrm{m}180\ensuremathμm. This arm separation is larger than that observed for any previous atom interferometer. The device uses atoms weakly confined in a magnetic guide and the atomic motion is controlled using Bragg interactions with an off-resonant standing-wave laser beam.
An atom Michelson interferometer is implemented on an "atom chip." The chip uses lithographically patterned conductors and external magnetic fields to produce and guide a Bose-Einstein condensate. Splitting, reflecting, and recombining of condensate atoms are achieved by a standing-wave light field having a wave vector aligned along the atom waveguide. A differential phase shift between the two arms of the interferometer is introduced by either a magnetic-field gradient or with an initial condensate velocity. Interference contrast is still observable at 20% with an atom propagation time of 10 ms.
An atom interferometer using Bose-Einstein condensates has been implemented and is used to measure the dynamic polarizability of 87Rb. An off-resonant standing-wave laser beam is used to manipulate the motion of atomic wavepackets in order to implement splitting and reflection operations. It is demonstrated that these operations can be performed with near unity fidelity. Interferometer times of up to 72 ms as well as arm separations of up to 0.42 mm are achieved experimentally. The primary limitation for guided-wave atom interferometers with a large arm separation is found to be the effect of the confining potential along the waveguide axis. Such a potential causes a spatially varying phase shift on the wavepackets as they propagate in the interferometer. Different parts of the cloud therefore interfere with different phases, leading to a reduction of the interferometer contrast. A model of the phase shifts on the wavepackets agrees well with the experimental data. In a different scheme in which the wavepackets oscillate freely in the confining potential, these phase shifts completely cancel. Interference is observed at times up to 0.9 s in this case, but with a fluctuating overall phase of the output, which is attributed to mechanical instabilities. Finally, the dynamic polarizability of 87Rb is measured. A well-calibrated laser beam is applied to one atomic packet and not the other, inducing a differential phase shift. This technique requires relatively low laser intensity and works for arbitrary optical frequencies. For offresonant light, the ac polarizability is obtained with a statistical accuracy of 3% and a calibration uncertainty of 6%. On resonance, the dispersion-shaped behavior of the Stark shift is observed, but with a broadened linewidth that is attributed to multiple and collective light scattering effects. The resulting nonlinearity may prove useful for the production and control of squeezed quantum states. In general, this work also demonstrates the applicability of condensate interferometry to practical measurements.
Precision interferometry with atomic wavepackets confined in a one-dimensional optical lattice is an emergent paradigm in quantum sensing of forces and fields, with applications in gravimetry, accelerometry, geophysics, and fundamental physics tests. We report on the realization of a lattice-trapped interferometer where the two arms are sourced from a weakly-interacting ytterbium Bose-Einstein condensate, coherently split and trapped by pulsed optical standing waves before recombination. We directly observe atomic interactions through contrast changes and phase shifts of the interferometer. By changing either the atom number or the sample volume to vary the density, we demonstrate control over interactions and optimize interferometer performance. Our observations are effectively captured by a mean-field theoretical model of the system. This work experimentally probes the boundary where improved performance from source brightening through higher phase space density transitions into a regime beyond single-atom physics in lattice-trapped atom interferometry, and opens a door to incorporating many-body effects for metrological advances in such platforms.
Guided-wave atom interferometers measure interference effects using atoms held in a confining potential. In one common implementation, the confinement is primarily two dimensional, and the atoms move along the nearly free dimension after being manipulated by an off-resonant standing wave laser beam. In this configuration, residual confinement along the nominally free axis can introduce a phase gradient to the atoms that limits the arm separation of the interferometer. We experimentally investigate this effect in detail, and show that it can be alleviated by having the atoms undergo a more symmetric motion in the guide. This can be achieved by either using additional laser pulses or by allowing the atoms to freely oscillate in the potential. With these techniques, we demonstrate interferometer measurement times up to 72ms72\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}\mathrm{ms}72ms and arm separations up to 0.42mm0.42\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}\mathrm{mm}0.42mm with a well controlled phase, or times of 0.91s0.91\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}\mathrm{s}0.91s and separations of 1.7mm1.7\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}\mathrm{mm}1.7mm with an uncontrolled phase.
We construct a Mach-Zehnder interferometer using Bose-Einstein condensed rubidium atoms and optical Bragg diffraction. In contrast to interferometers based on normal diffraction, where only a small percentage of the atoms contribute to the signal, our Bragg diffraction interferometer uses all the condensate atoms. The condensate coherence properties and high phase-space density result in an interference pattern of nearly 100% contrast. The two arms of the interferometer may be completely separated in space, making it an ideal tool that can be used to detect vortices or other topological condensate phases.
We analyze a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC)-based free oscillation atom Michelson interferometer in a weakly confining harmonic magnetic trap. A BEC at the center of the trap is split into two harmonics by a laser standing wave. The harmonics move in opposite directions with equal speeds and turn back under the influence of the trapping potential at their classical turning points. The harmonics are allowed to pass through each other and a recombination pulse is applied when they overlap at the end of a cycle after they return for the second time. We derive an expression for the contrast of the interferometric fringes and obtain the fundamental limit of performance of the interferometer in the parameter space.