An atom interferometer using thermal lithium atoms
Alain Miffre, Marion Jacquey, R. Delhuille +4 more
\nWe have built an atom interferometer of the Mach-Zehnder type, operating with thermal lithium atoms [1]. Its design is largely inspired by previous works done by the groups of D. Pritchard [2], A. Zeilinger [3] and S.A. Lee [4]. In our apparatus, the atomic wave is diffracted in the Bragg regime by three laser sanding waves to achieve a Mach-Zehnder configuration. This paper briefly recalls the diffraction process and shows the experimental results obtained in our group. Our apparatus is able to achieve a high fringe contrast of 74 % with a large mean detected atom flux of $1.5 \\times 10^{4}$s$^{-1}$. Finally, the paper ends with the measurement of the velocity distribution of our lithium beam using a light induced fluorescence technique.\n
Journal de Physique IV (Proceedings)•Nov 1, 2004•0 citations