Matter-Wave Decoherence due to a Gas Environment in an Atom Interferometer

Abstract

Decoherence due to scattering from background gas particles is observed for the first time in a Mach-Zehnder atom interferometer, and compared with decoherence due to scattering photons. A single theory is shown to describe decoherence due to scattering either atoms or photons. Predictions from this theory are tested by experiments with different species of background gas, and also by experiments with different collimation restrictions on an atom beam interferometer.

4 pages, 3 figures, accepted to PRL

References in corpus (4)

• Decoherence, einselection, and the quantum origins of the classical
• Matter-wave interferometer for large molecules
• Collisional decoherence observed in matter wave interferometry
• Glory Oscillations in the Index of Refraction for Matter-Waves

Cited by in corpus (15)

• Atom Interferometers
• Quantum Decoherence
• Quantum linear Boltzmann equation
• Quantum Darwinism in an Everyday Environment: Huge Redundancy in Scattered Photons
• Redundant Information from Thermal Illumination: Quantum Darwinism in Scattered Photons
• Observation of coherence revival and fidelity saturation in a delta-kicked rotor potential
• First measurements of the index of refraction of gases for lithium atomic waves
• Quantum master equations for a system interacting with quantum gas in the low density limit and for the semiclassical collision model
• Probing decoherence in plasmonic waveguides in the quantum regime
• Nanoscale magnetism probed in a matter-wave interferometer
• Detecting the Harmonic Vibrations of Micro Amplitudes and Low Frequencies with Atomic Mach-Zehnder Interferometer
• Scattering induced spatial superpositions in multi-particle localization
• Recoil Free Scattering From a Free Gas
• Atom walking in a traveling-wave light
• Three-dimensional cooling of an atom beam source for high-contrast atom interferometry