Related papers: A high-flux source system for matter-wave interfer…
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-atom interferometry is a powerful tool for high-precision measurements of the quantum properties of atoms, many-body interactions and gravity. Further enhancement of sensitivity and reduction of complexity of these devices are crucial…
We sense the motion of a trapped atomic ion using a sequence of state-dependent ultrafast momentum kicks. We use this atom interferometer to characterize a nearly-pure quantum state with $n=1$ phonon and accurately measure thermal states…
We experimentally demonstrate an atom number detector capable of simultaneous detection of two mesoscopic ensembles with single-atom resolution. Such a sensitivity is a prerequisite for quantum metrology at a precision approaching the…
The sensitivity of atom interferometers depends on their ability to realize long pulse separation times and prevent loss of contrast by limiting the expansion of the atomic ensemble within the interferometer beam through matter-wave…
We demonstrate the production of micron-sized high density atom clouds of interest for meso- scopic quantum information processing. We evaporate atoms from 60 microK, 3x10^14 atoms/cm^3 samples contained in a highly anisotropic optical…
We present a design and performance tests of an intense source of cold hydrogen atoms for loading large magnetic traps. Our source is based on a cryogenic dissociator of molecular hydrogen at 0.6 K followed by a series of thermal…
Interference is fundamental to wave dynamics and quantum mechanics. The quantum wave properties of particles are exploited in metrology using atom interferometers, allowing for high-precision inertia measurements [1, 2]. Furthermore, the…
Dilute gas Bose-Einstein condensates (BEC's), currently used to cool fermionic atoms in atom traps, can also probe the superfluidity of these fermions. The damping rate of BEC-acoustic excitations (phonon modes), measured in the middle of…
Modern precision measurements, such as interferometry for detecting gravitational waves, rely on the estimation of optical phases encoded in light fields. Here, we propose to exploit the collectively enhanced output field of a…
Compared to light interferometers, the flux in cold-atom interferometers is low and the associated shot noise large. Sensitivities beyond these limitations require the preparation of entangled atoms in different momentum modes. Here, we…
The demanding experimental access to the ultrafast dynamics of materials challenges our understanding of their electronic response to applied strong laser fields. For this purpose, trapped ultracold atoms with highly controllable potentials…
We report on the creation and characterization of heteronuclear KRb Feshbach molecules in an optical dipole trap. Starting from an ultracold gas mixture of K-40 and Rb-87 atoms, we create as many as 25,000 molecules at 300 nK by rf…
The coherence properties of a gas of bosonic atoms above the BEC transition temperature were studied. Bragg diffraction was used to create two spatially separated wave packets, which interfere during expansion. Given sufficient expansion…
We formulate a robust optimal control algorithm to synthesize minimum energy pulses that can transfer a cold atom system into various momentum states. The algorithm uses adaptive linearization of the evolution operator and sequential…
Matterwaves made up of ultra-cold quantum-degenerate atoms have enabled the creation of tools having unprecedented sensitivity and precision in measuring gravity, rotation or magnetic fields. Applications range from gravitational wave…
Matter-wave interferometry of ultra-cold atoms with attractive interactions is studied at the full many-body level. First, we study how a coherent light-pulse applied to an initially-condensed solitonic system splits it into two…
We have constructed and modeled a simple and efficient source of slow atoms. From a background vapour loaded magneto-optical trap, a thin laser beam extracts a continuous jet of cold rubidium atoms. In this setup, the extraction column that…
We analyze the interference pattern produced by ultracold atoms released from an optical lattice. Such interference patterns are commonly interpreted as the momentum distributions of the trapped quantum gas. We show that for finite…
We report the experimental study of an atom-chip interferometer using ultracold rubidium 87 atoms above the Bose-Einstein condensation threshold. The observed dependence of the contrast decay time with temperature and with the degree of…