Loschmidt cooling by time reversal of atomic matter waves

Abstract

We propose an experimental scheme which allows to realize approximate time reversal of matter waves for ultracold atoms in the regime of quantum chaos. We show that a significant fraction of the atoms return back to their original state, being at the same time cooled down by several orders of magnitude. We give a theoretical description of this effect supported by extensive numerical simulations. The proposed scheme can be implemented with existing experimental setups.

revtex 4 pages, 5 figs, research at http://www.quantware.ups-tlse.fr/, new data and modifications added