Hannover 2016 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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Q: Fachverband Quantenoptik und Photonik

Q 12: Ultra-cold atoms, ions and BEC (with A)

Q 12.8: Poster

Montag, 29. Februar 2016, 16:30–19:00, Empore Lichthof

Expansion dynamics of an ultracold gas from realistic trap potentials for atom interferometry — Bogdan Okhrimenko, Reinhold Walser, and •Srihari Srinivasan — Institut für Angewandte Physik, TU Darmstadt, Hochschulstraße 4a, 64289 Darmstadt

The versatility of Bose-Einstein Condensates (BEC) for use in experiments has enabled an entire genre of topics ranging from quantum optics and condensed matter physics to quantum simulators and sensors. The QUANTUS collaboration [1] aims to use atom interferometry with an ultracold ⁸⁷Rb gas in the vacuum drop tower at ZARM in Bremen [2]. The experiment module can either be catapulted or dropped inside the vacuum drop tower to perform atom interferometry in micro-gravity under free fall to test Einstein’s Equivalence Principle.
Expansion dynamics of a BEC is well understood analytically [3]. Interferometric fringe contrast of an expanding BEC released from the trap is strongly influenced trap anharmonicity and thermal component of the gas. We aim to simulate the expansion of a BEC and a thermal cloud from a realistic, anisotropic magnetic trap of the QUANTUS II atom chip. This is done as a part of a comprehensive simulation of a realistic atom interferometer to be used for comparison with experimental data.

[1] QUANTUS Collaboration:www.iqo.uni-hannover.de/quantus.html

[2] T. van Zoest et al., Science, 328, 1540 (2010) and H. Mütinga et al., Phys. Rev. Lett., 110, 093602 (2013).

[3] Yu Kagan et al., Phys. Rev. A, 54(3), R1753 (1996) and Y Castin et al., Phys. Rev. Lett., 77(27), 5315 (1996).