Increasing the coherence time of Bose-Einstein-condensate interferometers with optical control of dynamics

Abstract

Atom interferometers using Bose-Einstein condensate that is confined in a waveguide and manipulated by optical pulses have been limited by their short coherence times. We present a theoretical model that offers a physically simple explanation for the loss of contrast and propose the method for increasing the fringe contrast by recombining the atoms at a different time. A simple, quantitatively accurate, analytical expression for the optimized recombination time is presented and used to place limits on the physical parameters for which the contrast may be recovered.

34 Pages, 8 Figures

References in corpus (3)

• Matter-wave interferometry in a double well on an atom chip
• A Bose-Einstein condensate interferometer with macroscopic arm separation
• Interferometry in dense nonlinear media and interaction-induced loss of contrast in microfabricated atom interferometers

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Confinement effects in a guided-wave interferometer with millimeter-scale arm separation
• Measurement of the ac Stark shift with a guided matter-wave interferometer
• Theoretical analysis of a single and double reflection atom interferometer in a weakly-confining magnetic trap
• Collisional decoherence in trapped atom interferometers that use non-degenerate sources