Atom Interferometry in a Vertical Optical Lattice

Abstract

We have studied the interference of degenerate quantum gases in a vertical optical lattice. The coherence of the atoms leads to an interference pattern when the atoms are released from the lattice. This has been shown for a Bose-Einstein condensate in early experiments. Here we demonstrate that also for fermions an interference pattern can be observed provided that the momentum distribution is smaller then the recoil momentum of the lattice. Special attention is given to the role of interactions which wash out the interference pattern for a condensate but do not affect a spin polarized Fermi gas, where collisions at ultra cold temperatures are forbidden. Comparing the interference of the two quantum gases we find a clear superiority of fermions for trapped atom interferometry.

10 pages, 5 figures

References in corpus (5)

• Sensitive Absolute Gravity Gradiometry Using Atom Interferometry
• Fermi-Bose quantum degenerate ^40 K - ^87 Rb mixture with attractive interaction
• Atom interferometry with trapped Fermi gases
• Contrast Interferometry Using Bose-Einstein Condensates to Measure h/m and the Fine Structure Constant
• Probing Sub-Micron Forces by Interferometry of Bose-Einstein Condensed Atoms

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Coherent matter wave inertial sensors for precision measurements in space
• Transport of a quantum degenerate heteronuclear Bose-Fermi mixture in a harmonic trap
• Dipole and Bloch oscillations of cold atoms in a parabolic lattice
• Open Quantum System Approach to the Gravitational Decoherence of Spin-1/2 Particles