München 2004 – scientific programme

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Q: Quantenoptik und Photonik

Q 51: Quantengase IV

Q 51.4: Talk

Friday, March 26, 2004, 11:45–12:00, HS 225

Decoherence of cold atomic gases in magnetic micro-traps — •Christian Schroll, Wolfgang Belzig, and Christoph Bruder — Universität Basel, Department für Physik und Astronomie, Klingelbergstr. 82, CH-4056 Basel, Schweiz

We derive a model to describe decoherence of atomic clouds in atom-chip traps taking the excited states of the trapping potential into account. We use this model to investigate decoherence for a single trapping well and for a pair of trapping wells that form the two arms of an atom interferometer. Including the discrete spectrum of the trapping potential gives rise to a decoherence mechanism with a decoherence rate Γ that scales like Γ ∼ 1/r₀⁴ with the distance r₀ from the trap minimum to the wire.