Osnabrück 2002 – scientific programme

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Q: Quantenoptik

Q 321: Bose-Einstein Kondensation II

Q 321.1: Talk

Wednesday, March 6, 2002, 16:30–16:45, HS 22/B01

Contrast Interferometry with Bose-Einstein Condensates — •Kai Dieckmann, Subhadeep Gupta, Zoran Hadzibabic, Claudiu Stan, Wolfgang Ketterle, and David Pritchard — MIT, Cambridge, USA

One route to a high precision measurement of the fine-structure constant involves a precise determination of the ratio ℏ / m_alkali [1]. This ratio can be determined from the measurement of the photon-recoil in an atom-light interferometer. So far, the precision of such experiments are limited by phase fluctuations of the light between the pulses [2]. We recently demonstrated a new type of contrast interferometer based on Bragg scattering of Bose-Einstein condensates from light creating multiple paths for the atoms. We discuss the principle and explore some advantages of our scheme. First, we verified that the phase of the interference pattern is independent of the phase of the light. Further, it is experimentally demonstrated that the precision of our type of interferometer depends on the square of the maximum number of photon recoils transferred to the atoms. Therefore, an extension of the new scheme with the use of multiple light pulses in a new and dedicated setup promises to greatly enhance our present precision.

[1] M.P.Bradley et al., PRL, 83, 4510, (1999)

[2] Young B., PhD Thesis, Stanford University, (1999)