We present a detailed investigation of the coherence properties of beam splitters and Mach-Zehnder interferometers for guided atoms. It is demonstrated that such a setup permits coherent wave packet splitting and leads to the appearance of interference fringes. We study single-mode and thermal input states and show that even for thermal input states interference fringes can be clearly observed, thus demonstrating the multimode operation and the robustness of the interferometer.
@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0309227,
title = {Coherence Properties of Guided-Atom Interferometers},
author = {H. Kreutzmann and U. V. Poulsen and M. Lewenstein and R. Dumke and W. Ertmer and G. Birkl and A. Sanpera},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0309227},
year = {2009}
}