Multi-Orbital Quantum Phase Diffusion
Abstract
The collapses and revivals of a coherent matter wave field of interacting particles can serve as a sensitive interferometric probe of the interactions and the number statistics of the underlying quantum field. Here we show how the ability to observe long time traces of collapse and revival dynamics of a Bose-Einstein condensate loaded into a three-dimensional (3D) optical lattice allowed us to directly reveal the atom number statistics and the presence of effective coherent multi-particle interactions in a lattice. The multi-particle interactions are generated via virtual transitions to higher lattice orbitals and can find use for simulations of effective field theories with ultracold atoms in optical lattices. We measured their absolute strengths up to the case of six-particle interactions and compare our findings with theory.
Cite
@article{arxiv.0911.5066,
title = {Multi-Orbital Quantum Phase Diffusion},
author = {Sebastian Will and Thorsten Best and Ulrich Schneider and Lucia Hackermüller and Dirk-Sören Lühmann and Immanuel Bloch},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0911.5066},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
6 pages, 4 figures