Hannover 2013 – scientific programme

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A: Fachverband Atomphysik

A 40: Poster: Ultra-cold plasmas and Rydberg systems (with Q)

A 40.1: Poster

Thursday, March 21, 2013, 16:00–18:30, Empore Lichthof

An optically resolvable Schrödinger's cat from Rydberg dressed cold atom clouds — Sebastian Möbius, Michael Genkin, Alexander Eisfeld, •Sebastian Wuester, and Jan-Michael Rost — Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems, Noethnitzer Str. 38, D-01187 Dresden, Germany

In Rydberg dressed ultra-cold gases, ground state atoms inherit properties of a weakly admixed Rydberg state, such as sensitivity to long-range interactions. We show that through hyperfine-state dependent interactions, a pair of atom clouds can evolve into a spin and subsequently into a spatial Schroedinger's cat state: The pair, containing 40 atoms in total, is in a coherent superposition of two configurations, with cloud locations separated by micrometers. The mesoscopic nature of the superposition state can be proven with absorption imaging, while the coherence can be revealed though recombination and interference of the split wave packets.