Quantum matter wave dynamics with moving mirrors

Abstract

When a stationary reflecting wall acting as a perfect mirror for an atomic beam with well defined incident velocity is suddenly removed, the density profile develops during the time evolution an oscillatory pattern known as diffraction in time. The interference fringes are suppressed or their visibility is diminished by several effects such as averaging over a distribution of incident velocities, apodization of the aperture function, atom-atom interactions, imperfect reflection or environmental noise. However, when the mirror moves with finite velocity along the direction of propagation of the beam, the visibility of the fringes is enhanced. For mirror velocities below beam velocity, as used for slowing down the beam, the matter wave splits into three regions separated by space-time points with classical analogues. For mirror velocities above beam velocity a visibility enhancement occurs without a classical counterpart. When the velocity of the beam approaches that of the mirror the density oscillations rise by a factor 1.8 over the stationary value.

5.2 pages, 6 figures

References in corpus (13)

• Attosecond double-slit experiment
• Dynamics of a Tonks-Girardeau gas released from a hard-wall trap
• Diffraction in time in terms of Wigner distributions and tomographic probabilities
• $\delta$-Function Perturbations and Boundary Problems by Path Integration
• Time dependence of evanescent quantum waves
• Generic Short-Time Propagation of Sharp-Boundaries Wave Packets
• Diffraction of a Bose-Einstein Condensate in the Time Domain
• Time modulation of atom sources
• Matter wave pulses characteristics
• Matter-wave diffraction in time with a linear potential
• A moving magnetic mirror to slow down a bunch of atoms
• Universal potential barrier penetration by initially confined wavepackets
• Unitary transformation for the system of a particle in a linear potential

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Shortcuts to adiabaticity
• Shortcuts to adiabatic passage for fast generation of three-atom singlet state by transitionless quantum driving
• Quantum Dynamics in a Time-dependent Hard-Wall Spherical Trap
• Quantum particle displacement by a moving localized potential trap
• Quantum dynamics in a time-dependent cylindrical trap
• Trapping of quantum particles and light beams by switchable potential wells