Heidelberg 2015 – scientific programme

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Q: Fachverband Quantenoptik und Photonik

Q 62: Poster: Quantum Optics and Photonics III

Q 62.40: Poster

Thursday, March 26, 2015, 17:00–19:00, C/Foyer

Towards a unified description of time independent matter-wave interferometers — •Alexander Friedrich, Enno Giese, and Wolfgang P. Schleich — Institut für Quantenphysik and Center for Integrated Quantum Science and Technology (IQ^ST), Universität Ulm, Albert-Einstein-Allee 11, D-89081 Ulm, Germany

Single-crystal neutron interferometers, as used in the landmark COW-experiment¹, differ significantly in their theoretical description from the more recent class of light pulse atom interferometers like the Kasevich-Chu interferometer. Both interferometers permit measurements of the gravitationally induced phase-shift in matter-waves. The latter can be described solely in terms of a theory based on the time dependent Schrödinger equation³ while the first is heavily reliant on solving the time independent Schrödinger equation in position-space by employing dynamical diffraction inside the crystal and using path integrals in the gravitational field. This dependence on the combination of two fundamentally different approaches to quantum mechanics is non-satisfying from a theoretical point of view. Nevertheless it is possible to show that the classical beam trajectories in a COW- and Mach-Zehnder type atom interferometer are equivalent to first order.^2,4 In our work we therefore investigate a unified approach to the description of time independent matter-wave interferometers.

[1] R. Colella et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 3, 1472-1474 (1975)

[2] D. Greenberger et al., Phys. Rev. A. 86, 063622 (2012)

[3] W. P. Schleich et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 010401 (2013)

[4] H. Lemmel, ArXiv e-prints id:1406.1328 (2014)