Related papers: Bloch-bands Picture for Light Pulse Atom Diffracti…
Recently, optical lattices with non-zero Berry's phases of Bloch bands have been realized. New approaches for measuring Berry's phases and topological properties of bands with experimental tools appropriate for ultracold atoms need to be…
Bragg Diffraction of matter waves is an established technique used in the most accurate quantum sensors. It is also the method of choice to operate large-momentum-transfer, high-sensitivity atom interferometers. It suffers, however, from an…
Calculations of propagating quantum trajectories associated to a wave function provide new insight into quantum processes such as particle scattering and diffraction. Here, hydrodynamic calculations of electron beam imaging under conditions…
We present a flexible method that can calculate Bloch modes, complex band structures, and impedances of two-dimensional photonic crystals from scattering data produced by widely available numerical tools. The method generalizes previous…
We demonstrate the operation of an atom interferometer based on a weakly interacting Bose-Einstein condensate. We strongly reduce the interaction induced decoherence that usually limits interferometers based on trapped condensates by tuning…
We study the effects of strong inter-particle interaction on diffraction of a Bose-Einstein condensate of $^6Li_2$ molecules from a periodic potential created by pulses of a far detuned optical standing wave. For short pulses we observe the…
Multi-photon Bragg diffraction is a powerful method for fast, coherent momentum transfer of atom waves. However, laser noise, Doppler detunings, and cloud expansion limit its efficiency in large momentum transfer (LMT) pulse sequences. We…
Bloch waves and Bloch band of Bose-Einstein Condensates in optical lattices are studied. We provide further evidence for the loop structure in the Bloch band, and compute the critical values of the mean-field interaction strength for the…
The use of off-resonant standing light waves to manipulate ultracold atoms is investigated. Previous work has illustrated that optical pulses can provide efficient beam-splitting and reflection operations for atomic wave packets. The…
Large-momentum-transfer techniques are instrumental for the next generation of atom interferometers as they significantly improve their sensitivity. State-of-the-art implementations rely on elastic scattering processes from optical lattices…
We demonstrate a light-pulse atom interferometer based on the diffraction of free-falling atoms by a picosecond frequency-comb laser. More specifically, we coherently split and recombine wave packets of cold $^{87}$Rb atoms by driving…
Cold atoms in an optical lattice provide an ideal platform for studying Bloch oscillations. Here, we extend Bloch oscillations to two superposed optical lattices that are accelerated away from one another, and for the first time show that…
Even at zero temperature, there exist phase fluctuations associated with an array of Bose-Einstein condensates confined in a one-dimensional optical lattice. We demonstrate a method to measure the phase fluctuations based on the Fourier…
We use Bloch oscillations to transfer coherently many photon momenta to atoms. Then we can measure accurately the recoil velocity $\hbar k/m$ and deduce the fine structure constant $\alpha$. The velocity variation due to Bloch oscillations…
We discuss in detail the Bloch waves method for calculation of energy and orientation dependent scattering cross-section for inelastic scattering of electrons on crystals. Convergence properties are investigated and a new algorithm with…
Interference with atomic and molecular matter waves is a rich branch of atomic physics and quantum optics. It started with atom diffraction from crystal surfaces and the separated oscillatory fields technique used in atomic clocks. Atom…
A loop structure was predicted to exist in the Bloch bands of Bose-Einstein condensates in optical lattices recently in [{\it Wu and Niu, Phys. Rev. A {\bf 61}, 023402 (2000)}]. We discuss how to detect experimentally the looped band with…
The kinetic energy of an atom recoiling due to absorption of a photon was measured as a frequency using an interferometric technique called ``contrast interferometry''. Optical standing wave pulses were used as atom-optical elements to…
Analytic representation formulas and power series are developed to describe the band structure inside periodic elastic crystals made from high contrast inclusions. We use source free modes associated with structural spectra to represent the…
Increasing the sensitivity of light-pulse atom interferometers progressively relies on large-momentum transfer techniques. Precise control of such methods is imperative to exploit the full capabilities of these quantum sensors. One key…