Hannover 2013 – scientific programme
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Q: Fachverband Quantenoptik und Photonik
Q 15: Matter-wave optics
Q 15.1: Group Report
Monday, March 18, 2013, 16:30–17:00, F 142
Atom chip based matter wave interferometry at the Bremen drop tower — •Hauke Müntinga1, Claus Lämmerzahl1, and The QUANTUS Team1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 — 1ZARM, Universität Bremen — 2Institut für Quantenoptik, LU Hannover — 3Institut für Physik, HU Berlin — 4Institut für Laser-Physik, Universität Hamburg — 5Institut für Quantenphysik, Universität Ulm — 6Institut für angewandte Physik, TU Darmstadt — 7MUARC, University of Birmingham — 8FBH, Berlin — 9MPQ, Garching
The growing interest in microgravity platforms for AI is motivated by the prospect of performing high precision tests of fundamental gravitational effects, e.g. the WEP. The QUANTUS-I experiment has demonstrated the feasibility of operating delicate quantum optical experiments in a demanding environment and constitutes the first step towards space. In over 400 free fall experiments, the preparation, the free evolution [1] and the coherence of the condensate on macroscopic time scales have been studied. To this end, a matter wave interferometer using Bragg diffraction was implemented in our atom chip based setup and combined with a δ kick cooling scheme to slow the expansion of the clouds. With an asymmetrical Mach Zehnder scheme, contrast in the output ports was observed up to a total time in the interferometer of 677 ms. The QUANTUS project is supported by the German Space Agency DLR with funds provided by the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology (BMWi) under grant number DLR 50WM1131-1137.
[1] T. van Zoest et al., Science 328, 1540 (2010).