The observation of diffraction phases in matter wave scattering

Abstract

We study the diffraction phase of different orders via the Dyson expansion series, for ultracold atomic gases scattered by a standing-wave pulse. As these diffraction phases are not observable in a single pulse scattering process, a temporal Talbot-Lau interferometer consisting of two standing-wave pulses is demonstrated experimentally with a Bose-Einstein condensate to explore this physical effect. The role of the diffraction phases is clearly shown by the second standing-wave pulse in the relative population of different momentum states. Our experiments demonstrate obvious effects beyond the Raman-Nath method, while agree well with our theory by including the diffraction phases. In particular, the observed asymmetry in the dependence of the relative population on the interval between two standing-wave pulses reflects the diffraction phase differences. The role of interatomic interaction in the Talbot-Lau interferometer is also discussed.

7 pages, 3 figures, accepted by Phys. Rev. A

References in corpus (6)

• Atom Interferometers
• A Kapitza-Dirac-Talbot-Lau interferometer for highly polarizable molecules
• Atom-wave diffraction between the Raman-Nath and the Bragg regime: Effective Rabi frequency, losses, and phase shifts
• Momentum-space engineering of gaseous Bose-Einstein condensates
• Resonant sequential scattering in two-frequency-pumping superradiance from a Bose-Einstein condensate
• Manipulating the momentum state of a condensate by sequences of standing wave pulses

Cited by in corpus (8)

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• Advances in precision contrast interferometry with Yb Bose-Einstein condensates
• Atomic momentum patterns with narrower interval
• Temporal Talbot interferometer of strongly interacting molecular Bose-Einstein condensate
• Matter-wave interferometers with trapped strongly interacting Feshbach molecules
• Study to improve the performance of interferometer with ultra-cold atoms
• Diffraction of strongly interacting molecular Bose-Einstein condensate from standing wave light pulses