No Arabic abstract
We propose a feasible scheme to realize nonlinear Ramsey interferometry with a two-component Bose-Einstein condensate, where the nonlinearity arises from the interaction between coherent atoms. In our scheme, two Rosen-Zener pulses are separated by an intermediate holding period of variable duration and through varying the holding period we have observed nice Ramsey interference patterns in time domain. In contrast to the standard Ramsey fringes our nonlinear Ramsey patterns display diversiform structures ascribed to the interplay of the nonlinearity and asymmetry. In particular, we find that the frequency of the nonlinear Ramsey fringes exactly reflects the strength of nonlinearity as well as the asymmetry of system. Our finding suggests a potential application of the nonlinear Ramsey interferometry in calibrating the atomic parameters such as scattering length and energy spectrum.
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.
We report on the experimental observation of dynamic localization of a Bose-Einstein condensate in a shaken optical lattice, both for sinusoidal and square-wave forcing. The formulation of this effect in terms of a quasienergy band collapse, backed by the excellent agreement of the observed collapse points with the theoretical predictions, suggests the feasibility of systematic quasienergy band engineering.
We examine the effect of the intra- and interspecies scattering lengths on the dynamics of a two-component Bose-Einstein condensate, particularly focusing on the existence and stability of solitonic excitations. For each type of possible soliton pairs stability ranges are presented in tabulated form. We also compare the numerically established stability of bright-bright, bright-dark and dark-dark solitons with our analytical prediction and with that of Painleve-analysis of the dynamical equation. We demonstrate that tuning the inter-species scattering length away from the predicted value (keeping the intra-species coupling fixed) breaks the stability of the soliton pairs.
Bose-Einstein condensates have been produced in an optical box trap. This novel optical trap type has strong confinement in two directions comparable to that which is possible in an optical lattice, yet produces individual condensates rather than the thousands typical of a lattice. The box trap is integrated with single atom detection capability, paving the way for studies of quantum atom statistics.
We report on the generation of a quantum degenerate Fermi-Fermi mixture of two different atomic species. The quantum degenerate mixture is realized employing sympathetic cooling of fermionic Li-6 and K-40 gases by an evaporatively cooled bosonic Rb-87 gas. We describe the combination of trapping and cooling methods that proved crucial to successfully cool the mixture. In particular, we study the last part of the cooling process and show that the efficiency of sympathetic cooling of the Li-6 gas by Rb-87 is increased by the presence of K-40 through catalytic cooling. Due to the differing physical properties of the two components, the quantum degenerate Li-6 K-40 Fermi-Fermi mixture is an excellent candidate for a stable, heteronuclear system allowing to study several so far unexplored types of quantum matter.