Sub-Poissonian number differences in four-wave mixing of matter waves

Abstract

We demonstrate sub-Poissonian number differences in four-wave mixing of Bose-Einstein condensates of metastable helium. The collision between two Bose-Einstein condensates produces a scattering halo populated by pairs of atoms of opposing velocities, which we divide into several symmetric zones. We show that the atom number difference for opposing zones has sub-Poissonian noise fluctuations whereas that of nonopposing zones is well described by shot noise. The atom pairs produced in a dual number state are well adapted to sub shot-noise interferometry and studies of Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen-type nonlocality tests.

4 pages, 3 figures

References in corpus (9)

• Nonlinear atom interferometer surpasses classical precision limit
• Squeezing and entanglement in a Bose-Einstein condensate
• Camparison of the Hanbury Brown-Twiss effect for bosons and fermions
• Observation of atom pairs in spontaneous four wave mixing of two colliding Bose-Einstein Condensates
• Violation of the Cauchy-Schwarz Inequality in the Macroscopic Regime
• Atomic four-wave mixing via condensate collisions
• Spatial pair correlations of atoms in molecular dissociation
• Bose-Einstein Condensation and Spin Mixtures of Optically Trapped Metastable Helium
• Correlated directional atomic clouds via four-heterowave mixing