Measurement of the electric polarizability of lithium by atom interferometry

Abstract

We have built an atom interferometer and, by applying an electric field on one of the two interfering beams, we have measured the static electric polarizability of lithium with a 0.66 % uncertainty. Our experiment is similar to an experiment done on sodium in 1995 by D. Pritchard and co-workers, with several improvements: the electric field can be calculated analytically and our phase measurements are very accurate. This experiment illustrates the extreme sensitivity of atom interferometry: when the atom enters the electric field, its velocity increases and the fractional change, equal to 4 x 10^(-9) for our largest field, is measured with a 10^(-3) accuracy.

4 pages, 15 June 2005

References in corpus (1)

• Lithium atom interferometer using laser diffraction : description and experiments

Cited by in corpus (25)

• Atom Interferometers
• Colloquium: Quantum interference of clusters and molecules
• Calculations of static dipole polarizabilities of alkali dimers. Prospects for alignment of ultracold molecules
• Atom-wave diffraction between the Raman-Nath and the Bragg regime: Effective Rabi frequency, losses, and phase shifts
• Absolute and ratio measurements of the polarizability of Na, K, and Rb with an atom interferometer
• A Bose-Einstein condensate interferometer with macroscopic arm separation
• Polarizability measurements in a molecule near-field interferometer
• Non-relativistic ab initio calculations for $2^{2}S$, $2^{2}P$ and $3^{2}D$ lithium isotopes: Applications to polarizabilities and dispersion interactions
• Quantum Rolling Friction
• The dynamic dipole polarizabilities of the Li atom and the Be+ ion
• Atomic Interactions in Precision Interferometry Using Bose-Einstein Condensates
• An {\it ab initio} relativistic coupled-cluster theory of dipole and quadrupole polarizabilities: Applications to a few alkali atoms and alkaline earth ions
• Impact of Electric Fields on Highly Excited Rovibrational States of Polar Dimers
• Core polarizability of rubidium using spectroscopy of the ng to nh, ni Rydberg transitions
• Ab initio determination of polarizabilities and van der Waals coefficients of Li atoms using the relativistic CCSD(T) method
• Test of the isotopic and velocity selectivity of a lithium atom interferometer by magnetic dephasing
• Dispersion compensation in atom interferometry by a Sagnac phase
• Measurement of the 5D Level Polarizabilty in Laser Cooled Rb atoms
• Detecting the Harmonic Vibrations of Micro Amplitudes and Low Frequencies with Atomic Mach-Zehnder Interferometer
• Long-range three-body atom-diatom potential for doublet Li${}_3$
• On the nature of the two-positron bond: Evidence for a novel bond type
• Relativistic and Electron Correlation Effects in Static Dipole Polarizabilities for Main-Group Elements
• Ab initio Calculations of Electric Dipole Polarizabilities in the Li, Na and K Atoms
• Quantum Interference of Force
• Interferometry with Atoms