Measurement of the electric polarizability of lithium by atom interferometry
Quantum Physics
2016-08-16 v1
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.
Cite
@article{arxiv.quant-ph/0506106,
title = {Measurement of the electric polarizability of lithium by atom interferometry},
author = {Alain Miffre and Marion Jacquey and Matthias Buchner and Gérard Trenec and Jacques Vigue},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:quant-ph/0506106},
year = {2016}
}
Comments
4 pages, 15 June 2005