Hamburg 2009 – scientific programme
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Q: Fachverband Quantenoptik und Photonik
Q 26: Quantengase: Fermionen
Q 26.2: Talk
Tuesday, March 3, 2009, 16:45–17:00, VMP 6 HS-A
Interference of Two Molecular Bose-Einstein Condensates — •Christoph Kohstall1,2, Stefan Riedl1,2, Edmundo R. Sánchez Guajardo1,2, Leonid A. Sidorenkov1, Johannes Hecker Denschlag1, and Rudolf Grimm1,2 — 1Inst. of Experimental Physics and Center for Quantum Physics, Univ. Innsbruck, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria — 2Inst. for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information, Acad. of Science, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria
Interference of Bose-Einstein condensates (BEC) strikingly demonstrates the wave nature of matter. In this talk, we present the observation of interference of BECs made of molecules. Our starting point is a BEC of weakly bound Feshbach dimers consisting of fermionic lithium atoms in two different spin states. The condensate is split by slowly changing the trapping potential into a double well. Then, the two clouds are released and overlap. We record high-contrast interference fringes by absorption imaging. We explore different scenarios that affect the contrast of the interference fringes. First, contrast is lost when the interaction strength between the molecules is increased. The mean field of one cloud repels the other and the overlap is disturbed. Second, the contrast periodically changes when we excite collective modes along the line of sight. We attribute the change in contrast to the spatial change of the relative phase between the two clouds.