Elongated Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) exhibit strong spatial phase fluctuations even well below the BEC transition temperature. We demonstrate that atom interferometers using such condensates are robust against phase fluctuations, i.e. the relative phase of the split condensate is reproducible despite axial phase fluctuations. However, larger phase fluctuations limit the coherence time, especially in the presence of some asymmetries in the two wells of the interferometer.
We investigate dynamical properties of bright solitons with a finite background in the F=1 spinor Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC), based on an integrable spinor model which is equivalent to the matrix nonlinear Schr{o}dinger equation with a self-focus
ing nonlineality. We apply the inverse scattering method formulated for nonvanishing boundary conditions. The resulting soliton solutions can be regarded as a generalization of those under vanishing boundary conditions. One-soliton solutions are derived in an explicit manner. According to the behaviors at the infinity, they are classified into two kinds, domain-wall (DW) type and phase-shift (PS) type. The DW-type implies the ferromagnetic state with nonzero total spin and the PS-type implies the polar state, where the total spin amounts to zero. We also discuss two-soliton collisions. In particular, the spin-mixing phenomenon is confirmed in a collision involving the DW-type. The results are consistent with those of the previous studies for bright solitons under vanishing boundary conditions and dark solitons. As a result, we establish the robustness and the usefulness of the multiple matter-wave solitons in the spinor BECs.
Atom interferometers covering macroscopic domains of space-time are a spectacular manifestation of the wave nature of matter. Due to their unique coherence properties, Bose-Einstein condensates are ideal sources for an atom interferometer in extended free fall. In this paper we report on the realization of an asymmetric Mach-Zehnder interferometer operated with a Bose-Einstein condensate in microgravity. The resulting interference pattern is similar to the one in the far-field of a double-slit and shows a linear scaling with the time the wave packets expand. We employ delta-kick cooling in order to enhance the signal and extend our atom interferometer. Our experiments demonstrate the high potential of interferometers operated with quantum gases for probing the fundamental concepts of quantum mechanics and general relativity.
In a rotating two-component Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC), the traditional triangular vortex lattice can be replaced by a rectangular vortex lattice or even a structure characterized in terms of vortex sheets, depending on the interspecies interactions. We study the dynamics of this system by analyzing the Bogoliubov excitation spectrum. Excitations familiar to BEC vortex systems are found such as Tkachenko modes, hydrodynamic modes and surface waves, however, the complex two-component morphology also gives rise to new phenomena including shear flow between vortex sheets.
We propose a method of atom-interferometry using a spinor Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) with a time-varying magnetic field acting as a coherent beam-splitter. Our protocol creates long-lived superpositional counterflow states, which are of fundamental interest and can be made sensitive to both the Sagnac effect and magnetic fields on the sub-micro-G scale. We split a ring-trapped condensate, initially in the $m_f=0$ hyperfine state, into superpositions of internal $m_f=pm1$ states and condensate superflow, which are spin-orbit coupled. After interrogation, relative phase accumulation can be inferred from a population transfer to the $m_f=pm1$ states. The counterflow generation protocol is adiabatically deterministic and does not rely on coupling to additional optical fields or mechanical stirring techniques. Our protocol can maximise the classical Fisher information for any rotation, magnetic field, or interrigation time, and so has the maximum sensitivity available to uncorrelated particles. Precision can increase with the interrogation time, and so is limited only by the lifetime of the condensate.
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. With a control of the scattering length better that 0.1 $a_0$ we achieve coherence times of several hundreds of ms. The micrometric sizes of the atomic sample make our sensor an ideal 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.