Matter-Wave Interference versus Spontaneous Pattern Formation in Spinor Bose-Einstein Condensate
Abstract
We describe effects of matter-wave interference of spinor states in the Rb Bose-Einstein condensate. The components of the F=2 manifold are populated by forced Majorana transitions and then fall freely due to gravity in an applied magnetic field. Weak inhomogeneities of the magnetic field, present in the experiment, impose relative velocities onto different components, which show up as interference patterns upon measurement of atomic density distributions with a Stern-Gerlach imaging method. We show that interference effects may appear in experiments even if gradients of the magnetic field components are eliminated but higher order inhomogeneity is present and the duration of the interaction is long enough. In particular, we show that the resulting matter-wave interference patterns can mimic spontaneous pattern formation in the quantum gas.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1303.4599,
title = {Matter-Wave Interference versus Spontaneous Pattern Formation in Spinor Bose-Einstein Condensate},
author = {Marcin Witkowski and Rafal Gartman and Bartlomiej Nagorny and Marcin Piotrowski and Marcin Plodzien and Krzysztof Sacha and Jacek Szczepkowski and Jerzy Zachorowski and Michal Zawada and Wojciech Gawlik},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1303.4599},
year = {2013}
}
Comments
5 pages, 4 figures, version accepted in Phys. Rev. A