Berlin 2014 – scientific programme

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Q: Fachverband Quantenoptik und Photonik

Q 32: Poster: Quantum gases, ultracold atoms and molecules

Q 32.13: Poster

Wednesday, March 19, 2014, 16:30–18:30, Spree-Palais

Free Falling Bose Einstein Condensates in General Relativity — •Oliver Gabel and Reinhold Walser — Institut für Angewandte Physik, Technische Universität Darmstadt, Hochschulstr. 4a, 64289 Darmstadt

The recent development of matter-wave interferometry into a new tool for precision metrology holds the potential for measuring general relativistic effects to high accuracy.

The demonstration of Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) and matter wave interferometers in free fall by the QUANTUS collaboration [1,2] is at the forefront of this endeavour and aims at the verification of Einstein’s equivalence principle, the foundation of general relativity.

In this context, it has become relevant to extend the usual Newtonian description of BECs [3] to general relativity and to study the arising corrections in a systematic way. In this contribution, we present our latest results on the description of free falling BECs in curved space-time, based on the non-linear covariant Klein-Gordon equation and a local expansion of the metric tensor of the background space-time in terms of Fermi normal coordinates.

[1] T. van Zoest et. al., Bose-Einstein Condensation in Microgravity, Science, 328, 1540 (2010).

[2] H. Müntinga et. al., Interferometry with Bose-Einstein Condensates in Microgravity, Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 093602 (2013).

[3] G. Nandi, R. Walser, E. Kajari, and W. P. Schleich, Dropping cold quantum gases on Earth over long times and large distances, Phys. Rev. A 76, 63617 (2007).