Optically guided beam splitter for propagating matter waves

Abstract

We study experimentally and theoretically a beam splitter setup for guided atomic matter waves. The matter wave is a guided atom laser that can be tuned from quasi-monomode to a regime where many transverse modes are populated, and propagates in a horizontal dipole beam until it crosses another horizontal beam at 45${}^{\mathrm{o}}$. We show that depending on the parameters of this $X$ configuration, the atoms can all end up in one of the two beams (the system behaves as a perfect guide switch), or be split between the four available channels (the system behaves as a beam splitter). The splitting regime results from a chaotic scattering dynamics. The existence of these different regimes turns out to be robust against small variations of the parameters of the system. From numerical studies, we also propose a scheme that provides a robust and controlled beam splitter in two channels only.

References in corpus (9)

• Atom Interferometers
• Matter-wave interferometry in a double well on an atom chip
• Long Phase Coherence Time and Number Squeezing of two Bose-Einstein Condensates on an Atom Chip
• Optimal transport of ultracold atoms in the non-adiabatic regime
• A Bose-Einstein condensate interferometer with macroscopic arm separation
• A quasi-monomode guided atom-laser from an all-optical Bose-Einstein condensate
• Transporting, splitting and merging of atomic ensembles in a chip trap
• A slow gravity compensated Atom Laser
• A multibeam atom laser: coherent atom beam splitting from a single far detuned laser

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Optically guided linear Mach Zehnder atom interferometer