A quantum scattering interferometer

Jan Mostowski, Joseph H. Eberly

Frank V. Kowalski

Abstract Correlated interference is calculated for a microscopic particle retro‐reflecting from two spatially separated scatterers that are free to move, all three of which are treated as quantum bodies: the positions of the particle traversing this 1D interferometer and those of the interferometer components are all uncertain. Interference in a measurement of only the particle is shown to disappear for microscopic yet appear for mesoscopic scatterers, contrary to that of a quantum‐classical transition. A measurement of this threshold can verify quantum correlations in many‐body systems by measuring only the retro‐reflected microscopic particle. The decoherence of a mesoscopic scatterer is determined by this threshold without it having to traverse slits or beamsplitters.

F. De Martini, G. Denardo, Anton Zeilinger

David E. Pritchard, Michael Chapman, Troy D. Hammond +5 more

Atom interferometers are powerful tools for the study of fundamental issues in quantum mechanics. This paper describes the use of our atom interferometer [1] for an experimental realization of Feynman's gedanken experiment in which the observation of photons scattered off of particles emerging from a double slit is used to obtain which path information. This determination, in principal, of the particle's path, destroys any interference effects downstream. The interference can be regained by observing only those particles which scatter a photon into a small range of final directions.

Rui‐Bo Jin, Zi-Qi Zeng, Chenglong You +1 more

G. B. Altshuler, Vadim S. Ermolaev, M. V. INO-CHUKIN +1 more

Wave propagation through a Fabry-Perot interferometer filled with a nonlinear scattering heterogeneous medium is considered. Conditions were found under which the interferometer possesses bistable transmittance and reflectance. Experimental results demonstrating the predicted effects are presented for an interferometer filled with a glass-particles suspension in a nonlinear liquid. Attractive features of this type of bistable device based on nonlinear scattering are discussed.