Related papers: Bose-Einstein condensates in microgravity and fund…
Analogue gravity is based on the simple observation that perturbations propagating in several physical systems can be described by a quantum field theory in a curved spacetime. While phenomena like Hawking radiation are hardly detectable in…
Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) in free fall constitute a promising source for space-borne matter-wave interferometry. Indeed, BECs enjoy a slowly expanding wave function, display a large spatial coherence and can be engineered and probed…
This paper is a short introduction to cold atom physics and Bose-Einstein condensation. Light forces on atoms are presented, together with laser cooling, and a few atom traps: the magneto-optical trap, dipole traps and magnetic traps. A…
The accuracy and precision of current atom-interferometric inertialsensors rival state-of-the-art conventional devices using artifact-based test masses . Atomic sensors are well suited for fundamental measurements of gravito-inertial…
Light-pulse atom interferometers constitute powerful quantum sensors for inertial forces. They are based on delocalised spatial superpositions and the combination with internal transitions directly links them to atomic clocks. Since…
An atom interferometer using a Bose-Einstein condensate of $^{87}$Rb atoms is utilized for the measurement of magnetic field gradients. Composite optical pulses are used to construct a spatially symmetric Mach-Zehnder geometry. Using a…
We consider a Bose-Einstein condensate interacting with a gravitational wave for the case when the gravitational fluctuations are quantized in order to incorporate quantum gravity effects into the theory. We observe that the solution of the…
A Bose-Einstein condensate is used as an atomic source for a high precision sensor. A $5\times 10^6$ atom F=1 spinor condensate of $^{87}$Rb is released into free fall for up to $750$ms and probed with a Mach-Zehnder atom interferometer…
A Bose-Einstein condensate may be used to make precise measurements of weak forces, utilizing the macroscopic occupation of a single quantum state. We present a scheme which uses a condensate in a double well potential to do this. The…
The basic idea that gravity can be a long-wavelength effect {\it induced} by the peculiar ground state of an underlying quantum field theory leads to consider the implications of spontaneous symmetry breaking through an elementary scalar…
The behavior of a Bose--Einstein condensate in a homogeneous gravitational field is analyzed. We consider two different trapping potentials. Firstly, the gas is inside a finite container. The effects of the finiteness of the height of the…
A promising route to testing quantum gravity in the laboratory is to look for gravitationally-induced entanglement (GIE) between two or more quantum matter systems. Proposals for such tests have principally used microsolid systems, with…
We analyze prospects for the use of Bose-Einstein condensates as condensed-matter systems suitable for generating a generic ``effective metric'', and for mimicking kinematic aspects of general relativity. We extend the analysis due to Garay…
We investigate a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) as a gravitational wave detector, and study its sensitivity by optimizing the properties of the condensate and the measurement duration. We show that detecting kilohertz gravitational waves is…
Atom interferometers are powerful tools for both measurements in fundamental physics and inertial sensing applications. Their performance, however, has been limited by the available interrogation time of freely falling atoms in a…
Even if Einstein's General Relativity achieved a great success and overcame lots of experimental tests, it also showed some shortcomings and flaws which today advise theorists to ask if it is the definitive theory of gravity. In this essay…
We present two projects aiming to probe key aspects of the theory of General Relativity with high-precision quantum sensors. These projects use cold-atom interferometry with the aim of measuring gravitational waves and testing the…
Recent conjectures that there are mesoscopically ``large'' extra dimensions, through which gravity propagates have interesting implications for much of physics. The scenario implies gross departures from Newton's law of gravity at small…
We consider superfluid hydrodynamics of two-dimensional Bose-Einstein condensates. Interpreting the curvature of the macroscopic condensate wavefunction as an effective gravity in such a superfluid universe, we argue for a superfluid…
An alternative quantum field theory for gravity is proposed for low energies based on an attractive effect between contaminants in a Bose-Einstein Condensate rather than on particle exchange. In the ``contaminant in condensate effect,"…