We use magnetic levitation and a variable-separation dual optical plug to obtain clear spatial interference between two condensates axially separated by up to 0.25 mm -- the largest separation observed with this kind of interferometer. Clear planar fringes are observed using standard (i.e. non-tomographic) resonant absorption imaging. The effect of a weak inverted parabola potential on fringe separation is observed and agrees well with theory.
The entanglement between spatial regions in an interacting Bose-Einstein condensate is investigated using a quantum field theoretic formalism. Regions that are small compared to the healing length are governed by a non-relativistic quantum field theo
ry in the vacuum limit, and we show that the latter has vanishing entanglement. In the opposite limit of a region that is large compared to the healing length, the entanglement entropy is like in the vacuum of a relativistic theory where the velocity of light is replaced with the velocity of sound and where the inverse healing length provides a natural ultraviolet regularization scale. Besides the von Neumann entanglement entropy, we also calculate Renyi entanglement entropies for a one-dimensional quasi-condensate.
We investigate the energy structures and the dynamics of a Bose-Einstein condensates (BEC) in a triple-well potential coupled a high finesse optical cavity within a mean field approach. Due to the intrinsic atom-cavity field nonlinearity, several int
eresting phenomena arise which are the focuses of this work. For the energy structure, the bistability appears in the energy levels due to this atoms-cavity field nonlinearity, and the same phenomena can be found in the intra-cavity photons number. With an increase of the pump-cavity detunings, the higher and lower energy levels show a loop structure due to this cavity-mediated effects. In the dynamical process, an extensive numerical simulation of localization of the BECs for atoms initially trapped in one-, two-, and three-wells are performed for the symmetric and asymmetric cases in detail. It is shown that the the transition from oscillation to the localization can be modified by the cavity-mediated potential, which will enlarge the regions of oscillation. With the increasing of the atomic interaction, the oscillation is blocked and the localization emerges. The condensates atoms can be trapped either in one-, two-, or in three wells eventually where they are initially uploaded for certain parameters. In particular, we find that the transition from the oscillation to the localization is accompanied with some irregular regime where tunneling dynamics is dominated by chaos for this cavity-mediated system.
Interference of an array of independent Bose-Einstein condensates, whose experiment has been performed recently, is theoretically studied in detail. Even if the number of the atoms in each gas is kept finite and the phases of the gases are not well d
efined, interference fringes are observed on each snapshot. The statistics of the snapshot interference patterns, i.e., the average fringe amplitudes and their fluctuations (covariance), are computed analytically, and concise formulas for their asymptotic values for long time of flight are derived. Processes contributing to these quantities are clarified and the relationship with the description on the basis of the symmetry-breaking scenario is revealed.
We have observed interference between two Bose-Einstein condensates of weakly bound Feshbach molecules of fermionic $^6$Li atoms. Two condensates are prepared in a double-well trap and, after release from this trap, overlap in expansion. We detect a
clear interference pattern that unambiguously demonstrates the de Broglie wavelength of molecules. We verify that only the condensate fraction shows interference. For increasing interaction strength, the pattern vanishes because elastic collisions during overlap remove particles from the condensate wave function. For strong interaction the condensates do not penetrate each other as they collide hydrodynamically.
We studied the spatial coherence of a Bosonic two-dimensional multi-mode condensate both through measurements and simulations. It is shown that condensates with a constant spatial density must be described as the superposition of several quantized mo
des which reduces the overall coherence. In this case, the spatial coherence can appear to decay faster than allowed by the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) theory. However, we find through spectroscopic measurements that the individual modes show a slower decay of the spatial coherence than the overall system.