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arXiv:quant-ph/0104015 · Journal of Physics B Atomic Molecular and Optical Physics

Intrinsic decoherence in atomic diffraction with a standing light wave

Stefano Mancini, Rodolfo Bonifacio

Published May 2, 2001• 4 citations
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Abstract

We study the effects of time uncertainty in the interaction of atoms with a standing light wave. We discuss its physical origin and the possibility to observe intrinsic decoherence effects by measuring the atomic momentum distribution.
DOI
10.1088/0953-4075/34/10/306

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Momentum transfer to atoms by a standing light wave is measured in the presence of spontaneous decay. As the number of spontaneous decays is increased, the well-known Kapitza-Dirac diffractive structure observed in the absence of spontaneous decay evolves into a smooth diffusive pattern. Theoretical treatments based on a diffusive model adequately describe the rms momentum transfers and the envelopes of the momentum distributions. However, we observe significant persistence of diffractive structure at our long interaction times and find that details of the deflection profiles are accurately predicted only when several spontaneous decays occur during the interaction.
We study several effects which lead to symmetry-broken momentum distributions of quantum gases released from optical lattices. In particular, we demonstrate that the interaction within the first milliseconds of the time-of-flight expansion can strongly alter the measurement of the initial atomic momentum distribution. For bosonic mixtures in state-dependent lattices, interspecies scattering processes lead to a symmetry breaking in momentum space. The underlying mechanism is identified to be diffraction of the matter wave from the total density lattice, which gives rise to a time-dependent interaction potential. Our findings are of fundamental relevance for the interpretation of time-of-flight measurements and for the study of exotic quantum phases such as the twisted superfluid. Beyond that, the observed matter-wave diffraction can also be used as an interferometric probe. In addition, we report on diffraction from the state-dependent standing light field, which leads to the same symmetry-broken momentum distributions, even for single component condensates.