Destruction of interference by many-body interactions in cold atomic Bose gases
Soft Condensed Matter
2009-11-10 v2 Statistical Mechanics
Quantum Physics
Abstract
We study the effects of many-body interactions on the interference in a Mach-Zehnder interferometer for matter waves of ultracold Bose atoms. After switching off an axial trapping potential, the thermal initial wavepacket expands, and subsequently interference fringes may be observed in a circular 1D trap. These are computed for axial harmonic or -function traps, and for interaction strengths from the Thomas-Fermi regime to the Tonks-Girardeau limit. It is shown that many-body correlations in a realistic setup destroy interference to a large degree. Analytical expressions allowing to infer the observability of phase coherence and interference are provided.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0307199,
title = {Destruction of interference by many-body interactions in cold atomic Bose gases},
author = {Shu Chen and Reinhold Egger},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0307199},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
7 pages, 4 eps figures, final version, to be published in PRA