Dresden 2011 – scientific programme
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A: Fachverband Atomphysik
A 29: Ultracold Atoms: Trapping and Cooling 2 (with Q)
A 29.3: Talk
Friday, March 18, 2011, 11:00–11:15, HSZ 02
Homodyne Detection of Matter Wave — •Stefan Rist1 and Giovanna Morigi2,3 — 1NEST, Scuola Normale Superiore & Istituto di Nanoscienze - CNR, Piazza dei Cavalieri 7, I-56126 Pisa, Italy — 2Departament de F\'isica, Universitat Aut\`onoma de Barcelona, E-08193 Bellaterra, Spain — 3Theoretische Physik, Universit\"at des Saarlandes, D-66041 Saarbr\"ucken, Germany
We present a scheme which allows one for measuring the mean value of the atomic field operator of an ultracold bosonic gas. The scheme we consider is an extension of the experimental setups in [1,2] where atoms were outcoupled of two Bose-Einstein condensates by means of Bragg-scattering. Our scheme is the matter-wave analogon of homodyne detection in optics, where a quantum field is superposed at a beam splitter to a local oscillator. In our case the local oscillator is a Bose-Einstein condensate, from which atoms are outcoupled by means of two Raman lasers, and superimposed with the atoms outcoupled from the atomic system to determine.
The measurement is performed in the light scattered into one of of the Raman beams which is shown to be proportional to the mean value of the field operator of the atomic system. We provide two examples, such as the measurement of the temperature of a Bose-Einstein condensate and of the superfluid fraction in an optical lattice.
[1] M. Saba et al. Science 307, 1945 (2005).
[2] Y.~Shin et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 95, 170402 (2005).