Observation of Extra Photon Recoil in a Distorted Optical Field

Abstract

Light carries momentum which induces on atoms a recoil for each photon absorbed. In vacuum, for a monochromatic beam of frequency $\nu$, the global momentum per photon is bounded by general principles and is smaller than $h\nu /c$ leading to a limit on the recoil. However, locally this limit can be broken. In this paper, we give a general formula to calculate the recoil in vacuum. We show that in a laser beam with a distorted optical field, there are regions where the recoil can be higher than this limit. Using atoms placed in those regions we are able to measure directly the extra recoil.

References in corpus (10)

• Measurement of the fine-structure constant as a test of the Standard Model
• Precision Measurement of the Newtonian Gravitational Constant Using Cold Atoms
• New determination of the fine structure constant and test of the quantum electrodynamics
• Quantum Test of the Universality of Free Fall
• Dual Matter-Wave Inertial Sensors in Weightlessness
• Stability comparison of two absolute gravimeters: optical versus atomic interferometers
• Effect of interactions on the localization of a Bose-Einstein condensate in a quasi-periodic lattice
• Dynamics of Bloch Oscillations in Disordered Lattice Potentials
• Analysis of Localization Phenomena in Weakly Interacting Disordered Lattice Gases
• Damped Bloch Oscillations of Bose-Einstein Condensates in Disordered Potential Gradients

Cited by in corpus (14)

• Gravity surveys using a mobile atom interferometer
• Matter-wave Atomic Gradiometer Interferometric Sensor (MAGIS-100)
• Twin-lattice atom interferometry
• Improving the accuracy of atom interferometers with ultracold sources
• Multi-loop atomic Sagnac interferometry
• Precision inertial sensing with quantum gases
• State of the art in the determination of the fine structure constant and the ratio $h/m_{\mathrm{u}}$
• Atom interferometry with coherent enhancement of Bragg pulse sequences
• Universal Atom Interferometer Simulator -- Elastic Scattering Processes
• Multi-axis inertial sensing with 2D matter-wave arrays
• Finite Pulse-Time Effects in Long-Baseline Quantum Clock Interferometry
• Influence of optical aberrations on the accuracy of an atomic gravimeter
• Hyper Ramsey-Bordé matter-wave interferometry for robust quantum sensors
• Transverse Confinement of Photon Position in Light-Atom Interaction