Related papers: Optical manipulation of matter waves
This paper reviews some of our recent results in nonlinear atom optics. In addition to nonlinear wave-mixing between matter waves, we also discuss the dynamical interplay between optical and matter waves. This new paradigm, which is now…
A pulse of matter waves may dramatically change its shape when traversing an absorbing barrier with time-dependent transparency. Here we show that this effect can be utilized for controlled manipulation of spatially-localized quantum…
Light carries energy and momentum. It can therefore alter the motion of objects from atomic to astronomical scales. Being widely available, readily controllable and broadly biocompatible, light is also an ideal tool to propel microscopic…
Free-electron interactions with light and matter have long served as a cornerstone for exploring the quantum and ultrafast dynamics of material excitation. In recent years, this paradigm has evolved from a classical description of radiation…
Optics and interferometry with matter waves is the art of coherently manipulating the translational motion of particles like neutrons, atoms and molecules. Coherent atom optics is an extension of techniques that were developed for…
Within the combined potential of an optical lattice and a harmonic magnetic trap, it is possible to form matter wave packets by intensity modulation of the lattice. An analysis of the production and motion of these wave packets provides a…
We exploit free-space interactions between electron beams and tailored light fields to imprint on-demand phase profiles on the electron wave functions. Through rigorous semiclassical theory involving a quantum description of the electrons,…
Matter-wave optics is often viewed as a linear analogue of photonics, where noninteracting particles are coherently split, diffracted, and recombined, and interference arises from single-particle coherence. In ultracold quantum gases,…
Recent technological advances allowed the coherent optical manipulation of high-energy electron wavepackets with attosecond precision. Here we theoretically investigate the collision of optically-modulated pulsed electron beams with atomic…
Free electron beams such as those employed in electron microscopes have evolved into powerful tools to investigate photonic nanostructures with an unrivaled combination of spatial and spectral precision through the analysis of electron…
Light and sound waves have the fascinating property that they can move objects through the transfer of linear or angular momentum. This ability has led to the development of optical and acoustic tweezers, with applications ranging from…
Optomechanics, the study of the mechanical interaction of light with matter, has proven to be a fruitful area of research that has yielded many notable achievements, including the direct detection of gravitational waves in kilometer-scale…
Investigating the interaction of electron beams with materials and light has been a field of research since more than a century. The field was advanced theoretically by the raise of quantum mechanics and technically by the introduction of…
The fundamental processes of absorption, stimulated and spontaneous emission, and elastic as well as inelastic scattering involving light and atoms, molecules, and nano-particles have been studied for decades using both classical and…
The interaction between free electrons and nanoscale optical fields has emerged as a unique platform to investigate ultrafast processes in matter and explore fundamental quantum phenomena. In particular, optically modulated electrons are…
Coherent control of ultrafast quantum phenomena benefits from pulse-shaping capabilities allowing to modulate the envelope and instantaneous phase of optical fields on femtosecond time scales. While such control is available for optical…
We analyze the existence and stability of bright, dark, and gap matter-wave solitons in optical superlattices. Then, using these properties, we show that (time-dependent) ``dynamical superlattices'' can be used to controllably place, guide,…
The coherent interaction between free electrons and optical fields can produce free-electron compression and push the temporal resolution of ultrafast electron microscopy to the attosecond regime. However, a large electron-light interaction…
We introduce a simple set--up corresponding to the matter-wave analogue of impurity atoms embedded in an infinite photonic crystal and interacting with the radiation field. Atoms in a given internal level are trapped in an optical lattice,…
The interaction of light with objects and media moving at relativistic and superluminal speeds enables unconventional phenomena such as Fresnel drag, Hawking radiation, and light amplification. Synthetic motion, facilitated by modulated…