Atom interferometry with a weakly interacting Bose-Einstein condensate

Year: 2008

Authors: Fattori M., D’Errico C., Roati G., Zaccanti M., Jona-Lasinio M., Modugno M., Inguscio M., Modugno G.

Autors Affiliation: LENS and Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Firenze, and INFM-CNR Via Nello Carrara 1, 50019 Sesto Fiorentino, Italy;
Museo Storico della Fisica e Centro Studi e Ricerche “Enrico Fermi,” Compendio del Viminale, 00184 Roma, Italy;
INFN, Sezione di Firenze, Via Sansone 1, 50019 Sesto Fiorentino, Italy;
Dipartimento di Matematica Applicata, Università di Firenze, Italy;
BEC-INFM Center, Università di Trento, I-38050 Povo, Italy

Abstract: We demonstrate the operation of an atom interferometer based on a weakly interacting Bose-Einstein condensate. We strongly reduce the interaction induced decoherence that usually limits interferometers based on trapped condensates by tuning the s-wave scattering length almost to zero via a magnetic Feshbach resonance. We employ a (39)K condensate trapped in an optical lattice, where Bloch oscillations are forced by gravity. The fine-tuning of the scattering length down to 0.1 a(0) and the micrometric sizes of the atomic sample make our system a very promising candidate for measuring forces with high spatial resolution. Our technique can be in principle extended to other measurement schemes opening new possibilities in the field of trapped atom interferometry.

Journal/Review: PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS

Volume: 100 (8)      Pages from: 08405  to: 08405

KeyWords: Bose-Einstein condensation; Electron scattering; Interferometry; Magnetic field effects; Molecular interactions, Atom interferometry; Decoherence; Feshbach resonance, Gas condensates; Optical lattice; Interference; Soliton
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.100.080405

Citations: 157
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