Interference of a variable number of coherent atomic sources
Other Condensed Matter
2010-07-16 v1 Soft Condensed Matter
Atomic Physics
Abstract
We have studied the interference of a variable number of independently created microcondensates in a CO-laser optical lattice. The observed average interference contrast decreases with condensate number N. Our experimental results agree well with the predictions of a random walk model. While the exact result can be given in terms of Kluyver's formula, for a large number of sources a scaling of the average fringe contrast is obtained. This scaling law is found to be of more general applicability when quantifying the decay of coherence of an ensemble with N independently phased sources.
Cite
@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0505768,
title = {Interference of a variable number of coherent atomic sources},
author = {Giovanni Cennini and Carsten Geckeler and Gunnar Ritt and Martin Weitz},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0505768},
year = {2010}
}