Slow light and the phase of a Bose-Einstein condensate

Abstract

We investigate the propagation of light with ultra low group velocity in a Bose-Einstein condensate where the phase is not uniform. The light is shown to couple strongly to the phase gradient of the condensate. The interaction between the light and the condensate enables us to perform a phase imprinting where the phase of the condensate is imprinted on the light. We illustrate the effect by showing how one can measure the fluctuating phase in an elongated quasicondensate.

Replacement: 4 pages. Introduction rewritten and an embarrassing mistake in the list of references corrected

References in corpus (4)

• Observation of Quantum Shock Waves Created with Ultra Compressed Slow Light Pulses in a Bose-Einstein Condensate
• Observation of Phase Fluctuations in Bose-Einstein Condensates
• Observation of vortex phase singularities in Bose-Einstein condensates
• Phase-fluctuating 3D condensates in elongated traps

Cited by in corpus (10)

• Effective magnetic fields in degenerate atomic gases induced by light beams with orbital angular momenta
• Slow polaritons with orbital angular momentum in atomic gases
• Polarisation rotation of slow light with orbital angular momentum in ultracold atomic gases
• Effective magnetic fields for stationary light
• Optical vortices of slow light using tripod scheme
• Photonic band-gap properties for two-component slow light
• In-situ velocity imaging of ultracold atoms using slow--light
• Filled Landau levels in neutral quantum gases
• Non-equilibrium and local detection of the normal fraction of a trapped two-dimensional Bose gas
• Photonic band gap via quantum coherence in vortex lattices of Bose gases