Observation of Free-Space Single-Atom Matterwave Interference
Atomic Physics
2015-06-11 v1
Abstract
We observe matterwave interference of a single cesium atom in free fall. The interferometer is an absolute sensor of acceleration and we show that this technique is sensitive to forces at the level of N with a spatial resolution at the micron scale. We observe the build up of the interference pattern one atom at a time in an interferometer where the mean path separation extends far beyond the coherence length of the atom. Using the coherence length of the atom wavepacket as a metric, we directly probe the velocity distribution and measure the temperature of a single atom in free fall.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1208.4868,
title = {Observation of Free-Space Single-Atom Matterwave Interference},
author = {L. Paul Parazzoli and Aaron M. Hankin and Grant W. Biedermann},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1208.4868},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
5 pages, 4 figures