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arXiv · 1403.3485

A Bright Solitonic Matter-Wave Interferometer

Gordon D. McDonald·Carlos C. N. Kuhn·Kyle S. Hardman·Shayne Bennetts·Patrick J. Everitt·Paul A. Altin·John E. Debs·John D. Close·Nicholas P. Robins
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Abstract

We present the first realisation of a solitonic atom interferometer. A Bose-Einstein condensate of $1\times10^4$ atoms of rubidium-85 is loaded into a horizontal optical waveguide. Through the use of a Feshbach resonance, the $s$-wave scattering length of the $^{85}$Rb atoms is tuned to a small negative value. This attractive atomic interaction then balances the inherent matter-wave dispersion, creating a bright solitonic matter wave. A Mach-Zehnder interferometer is constructed by driving Bragg transitions with the use of an optical lattice co-linear with the waveguide. Matter wave propagation and interferometric fringe visibility are compared across a range of $s$-wave scattering values including repulsive, attractive and non-interacting values. The solitonic matter wave is found to significantly increase fringe visibility even compared with a non-interacting cloud.

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Gordon D. McDonald, Carlos C. N. Kuhn, Kyle S. Hardman, Shayne Bennetts, Patrick J. Everitt, Paul A. Altin, John E. Debs, John D. Close, Nicholas P. Robins. 2014-07-15. A Bright Solitonic Matter-Wave Interferometer. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.113.013002

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