Bose statistics imply a substantial enhancement at small angles for light scattering off a cold, Bose gas. The enhancement increases dramatically at the Bose-Einstein temperature. This phenomenon could be utilized to eliminate almost entirely the heating of the gas by a weak probe light beam.
The angle and temperature dependence of the photon scattering rate for Bose-stimulated atom recoil transitions between occupied states is compared to diffraction and incoherent Rayleigh scattering near the Bose-Einstein transition for an optically thin trap in the limit of large particle number, N. Each of these processes has a range of angles and temperatures for which it dominates over the others by a divergent factor as N->oo.
We observe velocity-selective two-photon resonances in a cold atom cloud in the presence of a magnetic field. We use these resonances to demonstrate a simple magnetometer with sub-mG resolution. The technique is particularly useful for zeroing the magnetic field and does not require any additional laser frequencies than are already used for standard magneto-optical traps. We verify the effects using Faraday rotation spectroscopy.
We propose an experiment for entangling two spatially separated Bose-Einstein condensates by Bragg scattering of light. When Bragg scattering in two condensates is stimulated by a common probe, the resulting quasiparticles in the two condensates get entangled due to quantum communication between the condensates via probe beam. The entanglement is shown to be significant and occurs in both number and quadrature phase variables. We present two methods of detecting the generated entanglement.
We show that it is possible to entangle three different many-particle states by Bragg spectroscopy with nonclassical light in a Bose condensate of weakly interacting atomic gases. Among these three states, two are of atoms corresponding to two opposite momentum side-modes of the condensate; and the other is of single-mode photons of the output probe beam. We demonstrate strong dependence of the multiparticle entanglement on the quantum statistics of the probe light. We present detailed results on entanglement keeping in view of the possible experimental situation.
We propose the use of stimulated Raman adiabatic passage (STIRAP) to offer a fast high fidelity method of performing SU(2) rotations on spinor Bose Einstein condensates (BEC). Past demonstrations of BEC optical control suffer from difficulties arising from collective enhancement of spontaneous emission and inefficient two-photon transitions originating from selection rules. We present here a novel scheme which allows for arbitrary coherent rotations of two-component BECs while overcoming these issues. Numerical tests of the method show that for BECs of \ce{^{87}Rb} with up to $ 10^4 $ atoms an…
Accurate control of a quantum system is a fundamental requirement in many areas of modern science ranging from quantum information processing to high-precision measurements. A significantly important goal in quantum control is to prepare a desired state as fast as possible with sufficiently high fidelity allowed by available resources and experimental constraints. Stimulated Raman adiabatic passage (STIRAP) is a robust way to realize high-fidelity state transfer but it requires a sufficiently long operation time to satisfy the adiabatic criteria. We here theoretically propose and then experime…
We analyze coherent two-color photoassociation of a Bose-Einstein condensate, focusing on stimulated Raman adiabatic passage (STIRAP) in free-bound-bound transitions from atoms to molecules. This problem is of particular interest since STIRAP is predicted to be necessarily absent in the nondegenerate case [Javanainen and Mackie, Phys. Rev. A 58, R789 (1998)]. However, Bose-stimulation enhances the free-bound dipole matrix element for an atomic condensate, and photoassociative STIRAP turns out to be a viable mechanism for converting an atomic condensate to a molecular condensate with near-unit …
Stimulated Raman scattering of atoms with $Λ$-configuration of levels is a promising tool for transducing microwave photons to optical photons. We consider an atomic Bose-Einstein condensate whose large phase-space density highly amplifies the coupling to the microwave field. Due momentum transfer to the condensate, stimulated photon scattering can occur outside of the phase-matched direction, which can be used to separate the converted photons from the strong Raman readout pulse. Conversely, in the phase-matched direction, superradiant scattering due to bosonic enhancement leads to increased …
We describe and characterize a setup for subrecoil stimulated Raman spectroscopy of cold cesium atoms. We study in particular the performances of a method designed to active control and stabilization of the magnetic fields across a cold-atom cloud inside a small vacuum cell. The performance of the setup is monitored by {\em copropagative-beam} stimulated Raman spectroscopy of a cold cesium sample. The root mean-square value of the residual magnetic field is 300 $μG$, with a compensation bandwidth of 500 Hz. The shape of the observed spectra is theoretically interpreted and compares very well t…
Robust stimulated Raman exact passages are requisite for controlling nonlinear quantum systems, with the wide applications ranging from ultracold molecules, non-linear optics to superchemistry. Inspired by shortcuts to adiabaticity, we propose the fast-forward scaling of stimulated Raman adiabatic processes with the nonlinearity involved, describing the transfer from an atomic Bose-Einstein condensate to a molecular one by controllable external fields. The fidelity and robustness of atom-molecule conversion are shown to surpass those of conventional adiabatic passages, assisted by fast-forward…
We implement high-efficiency coherent excitation to a Rydberg state using stimulated Raman adiabatic passage in a cold atom electron and ion source. We achieve an efficiency of 60% averaged over the laser excitation volume with a peak efficiency of 82%, a 1.6 times improvement relative to incoherent pulsed-laser excitation. Using pulsed electric field ionization of the Rydberg atoms we create electron bunches with durations of 250 ps. High-efficiency excitation will increase source brightness, crucial for ultrafast electron diffraction experiments, and coherent excitation to high-lying Rydberg…
Collective two-color photoassociation of a freely-interacting 87Rb Bose-Einstein condensate is theoretically examined, focusing on stimulated Raman adiabatic passage (STIRAP) from an atomic to a stable molecular condensate. In particular, Drummond et al. [Phys. Rev. A 65, 063619 (2002); cond-mat/0110578] have predicted that particle-particle interactions can limit the efficiency of collective atom-molecule STIRAP, and that optimizing the laser parameters can partially overcome this limitation. We suggest that the molecular conversion efficiency can be further improved by treating the initial c…
In a famous paper where he introduces the A and B coefficients, Einstein considered that atomic decays of excited atoms can be stimulated by light waves. Here we consider that atomic decays can also be stimulated by atomic waves. It is however necessary to change the Maxwell-Boltzmann statistics of thermal equilibrium into Bose-Einstein statistics and to introduce a coefficient C which complements the list of the coefficients introduced by Einstein. Stimulated emission of light can be considered as the first step towards the laser. Similarly, stimulated production of matter waves can be consid…
The manipulation of cold atoms with optical fields is a very promising technique for a variety of applications ranging from laser cooling and trapping to coherent atom transport and matter wave interferometry. Optical fields have also been proposed as interesting tools for quantum information processing with cold atoms. In this paper, we present a theoretical study of the dynamics of a cold 87Rb atomic cloud falling in the gravity field in the presence of two crossing dipole guides. The cloud is either deflected or split between the two branches of this guide. We explore the possibilities of o…
We present a detailed, realistic proposal and analysis of the implementation of a cold atom deflector using time-dependent far off-resonance optical guides. An analytical model and numerical simulations are used to illustrate its characteristics when applied to both non-degenerate atomic ensembles and to Bose-Einstein condensates. Using for all relevant parameters values that are achieved with present technology, we show that it is possible to deflect almost entirely an ensemble of $^{87}$Rb atoms falling in the gravity field. We discuss the limits of this proposal, and illustrate its robustne…
We report on the observation of collective atomic recoil lasing and superradiant Rayleigh scattering with ultracold and Bose-Einstein condensed atoms in an optical ring cavity. Both phenomena are based on instabilities evoked by the collective interaction of light with cold atomic gases. This publication clarifies the link between the two effects. The observation of superradiant behavior with thermal clouds as hot as several tens of $μ\textrm{K}$ proves that the phenomena are driven by the cooperative dynamics of the atoms, which is strongly enhanced by the presence of the ring cavity.
We have measured the 2-particle correlation function of atoms from a Bose--Einstein condensate participating in a superradiance process, which directly reflects the 2nd order coherence of the emitted light. We compare this correlation function with that of atoms undergoing stimulated emission. Whereas the stimulated process produces correlations resembling those of a coherent state, we find that superradiance, even in the presence of strong gain, shows a correlation function close to that of a thermal state, just as for ordinary spontaneous emission.
Ensembles of ultra-cold atoms have been proven to be versatile tools for high precision sensing applications. Here, we present a method for manipulation and readout of the state of trapped clouds of ultra-cold bosonic atoms. In particular, we discuss the creation of coherent and squeezed states of quasiparticles and the coupling of quasiparticle modes through an external cavity field. This enables operations like state swapping and beam splitting which can be applied to realize a Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) in frequency space. We present two explicit example applications in sensing: the …
We consider ultracold atoms in a far detuned optical lattice orientated across a high-Q optical resonator. Applying an external driving laser to the atoms, which is red detuned from the cavity mode by one vibrational quantum, induces cavity-enhanced sideband cooling. For a dense and cold enough atomic ensemble we predict an oscillation threshold for optical Raman sideband lasing concurrent with coherent matter-wave amplification. Above this oscillation threshold photons and atoms in the lowest band are dominantly created pairwise via stimulated emission with a strong suppression of competing s…
The equations of motion for the molecular rotation are derived for vibrationally cold dimers that are polarized by off-resonant laser light. It is shown that, by eliminating electronic and vibrational degrees of freedom, a quantum master equation for the reduced rotational density operator can be obtained. The coherent rotational dynamics is caused by stimulated Raman transitions, whereas spontaneous Raman transitions lead to decoherence in the motion of the quantized angular momentum. As an example the molecular dynamics for the optical Kerr effect is chosen, revealing decoherence and heating…
Cold atom optical lattices typically simulate zero-range Hubbard models. We discuss the theoretical possibility of using excited states of optical lattices to generate extended range Hubbard models. We find that bosons confined to higher bands of optical lattices allow for a rich phase diagram, including the supersolid phase. Using Gutzwiller, mean field theory we establish the parameter regime necessary to maintain metastable states generated by an extended Bose-Hubbard model.
Dynamics of atomic and molecular bright solitons in a hybrid atom-molecular BEC (Bose Einstein Condensate) system of 85Rb coupled through Magnetic Feshbach Resonance (MFR) has been investigated. By solving the time independent atom-molecular coupled equations, the initial atomic and molecular wavefunctions were obtained and the dynamics of the initial atomic and molecular waves in a spherical one-dimensional trap were studied by solving the time-dependent atom-molecular coupled equations. During evolution two types of induced or stimulated decays of the feshbach molecules were switched on. The…
We simulate ultra-cold interacting Bosons in quasi-one-dimensional, incommensurate optical lattices. In the tight-binding limit, these lattices have pseudo-random on-site energies and thus can potentially lead to Anderson localization. We explore the parameter regimes that lead to Anderson localization and investigate the role of repulsive interactions, harmonic confinement and finite temperature. We find that interactions can obscure the exponential localization characteristic of Anderson localization, thus impeding the direct observation of this phenomenon when interactions are present.
We propose a realistic experiment to demonstrate a dynamic Kosterlitz-Thouless transition in ultra-cold atomic gases in two dimensions. With a numerical implementation of the Truncated Wigner Approximation we simulate the time evolution of several correlation functions, which can be measured via matter wave interference. We demonstrate that the relaxational dynamics is well-described by a real-time renormalization group approach, and argue that these experiments can guide the development of a theoretical framework for the understanding of critical dynamics.
We present a detailed study to show the possibility of approaching the quantum ground-state of a hybrid optomechanical quantum device formed by a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) confined inside a high-finesse optical cavity with an oscillatory end mirror. Cooling is achieved using two experimentally realizable schemes: back-action cooling and cold damping quantum feedback cooling. In both the schemes, we found that increasing the two body atom-atom interaction brings the mechanical oscillator to its quantum ground state. It has been observed that back-action cooling is more effective in the goo…
We develop finite temperature theory for a trapped dipolar Bose gas including thermal exchange interactions. Previous treatments neglected these, difficult to compute, terms. We present a methodology for numerically evaluating the thermal exchange contributions, making use of cylindrical symmetry. We then investigate properties of the dipolar gas, including calculating the excitation spectrum over the full range of trap anisotropy. We evaluate the contributions due to thermal exchange noting that, under some regimes, these effects can be at least as significant as the direct interaction. We th…
We present the first detector capable of recording high-bandwidth real time atom number density measurements of a Bose Einstein condensate. Based on a two-color Mach-Zehnder interferometer, our detector has a response time that is six orders of magnitude faster than current detectors based on CCD cameras while still operating at the shot-noise limit. With this minimally destructive system it may be possible to implement feedback to stabilize a Bose-Einstein condensate or an atom laser.
Light-induced nonlinear terms in the Gross-Pitaevskii equation arise from the stimulated coherent exchange of photons between two atoms. For atoms in an optical dipole trap this effect depends on the spatial profile of the trapping laser beam. Two different laser beams can induce the same trapping potential but very different nonlinearities. We propose a scheme to measure light-induced nonlinearities which is based on this observation.
Solutions for the Nonlinear Schrodinger equation for collapsing Bose gas with attraction. This is a copy of the paper published in 1992 in Proceedings of NATO Advanced Research workshop on Singularities in Fluids, Plasmas and Optics (Heraklion, Greece) edited by R.E. Caflisch and G.C. Papanicolaou (Kluwer Academic).
In this paper we investigate the ground-state properties and related quantum phase transitions for the two-component Bose-Einstein condensate in a single-mode optical cavity. Apart from the usual normal and superradiant phases multi-stable macroscopic quantum states are realized by means of the spin-coherent-state variational method. We demonstrate analytically the stimulated radiation from collective state of atomic population inversion, which does not exist in the normal Dicke model with single-component atoms. It is also revealed that the stimulated radiation can be generated only from one …
We consider a method of sub-wavelength superlocalization and patterning of atomic matter waves via a two dimensional stimulated Raman adiabatic passage (2D STIRAP) process. An atom initially prepared in its ground level interacts with a doughnut-shaped optical vortex pump beam and a traveling wave Stokes laser beam with a constant (top-hat) intensity profile in space. The beams are sent in a counter-intuitive temporal sequence, in which the Stokes pulse precedes the pump pulse. The atoms interacting with both the traveling wave and the vortex beam are transferred to a final state through the 2…
We discuss the role of Bose enhancement of the dipole matrix element in photoassociation, using stimulated Raman adiabatic passage as an example. In a nondegenerate gas the time scale for coherent optical transients tends to infinity in the thermodynamic limit, whereas Bose enhancement keeps this time scale finite in a condensate. Coherent transients are therefore absent in photoassociation of a thermal nondegenerate gas, but are feasible if the gas is a condensate.
We introduce a detector that selectively probes the phononic excitations of a cold Bose gas. The detector is composed of a single impurity atom confined by a double-well potential, where the two lowest eigenstates of the impurity form an effective probe qubit that is coupled to the phonons via density-density interactions with the bosons. The system is analogous to a two-level atom coupled to photons of the radiation field. We demonstrate that tracking the evolution of the qubit populations allows probing both thermal and coherent excitations in targeted phonon modes. The targeted modes are se…
In ultracold atoms settings, inelastic light scattering is a preeminent technique to reveal static and dynamic properties at nonzero momentum. In this work, we investigate an array of one-dimensional trapped Bose gases, by measuring both the energy and the momentum imparted to the system via light scattering experiments. The measurements are performed in the weak perturbation regime, where these two quantities - the energy and momentum transferred - are expected to be related to the dynamical structure factor of the system. We discuss this relation, with special attention to the role of in-tra…
We derive flow equations for cold atomic gases with one macroscopically populated energy level. The generator is chosen such that the ground state decouples from all other states in the system as the renormalization group flow progresses. We propose a self-consistent truncation scheme for the flow equations at the level of three-body operators and show how they can be used to calculate the ground state energy of a general $N$-body system. Moreover, we provide a general method to estimate the truncation error in the calculated energies. Finally, we test our scheme by benchmarking to the exactly…
We study the effects of many-body interactions on the interference in a Mach-Zehnder interferometer for matter waves of ultracold Bose atoms. After switching off an axial trapping potential, the thermal initial wavepacket expands, and subsequently interference fringes may be observed in a circular 1D trap. These are computed for axial harmonic or $δ$-function traps, and for interaction strengths from the Thomas-Fermi regime to the Tonks-Girardeau limit. It is shown that many-body correlations in a realistic setup destroy interference to a large degree. Analytical expressions allowing to infer …
We solve a model that describes a stimulated conversion between ultracold bosonic atoms and molecules. The reaction is triggered by a linearly time-dependent transition throughout the Feshbach resonance. Our solution predicts a nonexponential dependence, with a dynamic phase transition, of the reaction efficiency on the transition rate. We find that the emerging phase can have a thermalized energy distribution with the temperature defined by the rate of the transition. This phase, however, has strong purely quantum correlations.
We present a cold atom gravimeter operating with a sample of Bose-condensed Rubidium-87 atoms. Using a Mach-Zehnder configuration with the two arms separated by a two-photon Bragg transition, we observe interference fringes with a visibility of 83% at T=3 ms. We exploit large momentum transfer (LMT) beam splitting to increase the enclosed space-time area of the interferometer using higher-order Bragg transitions and Bloch oscillations. We also compare fringes from condensed and thermal sources, and observe a reduced visibility of 58% for the thermal source. We suspect the loss in visibility is…
We review phase space techniques based on the Wigner representation that provide an approximate description of dilute ultra-cold Bose gases. In this approach the quantum field evolution can be represented using equations of motion of a similar form to the Gross-Pitaevskii equation but with stochastic modifications that include quantum effects in a controlled degree of approximation. These techniques provide a practical quantitative description of both equilibrium and dynamical properties of Bose gas systems. We develop versions of the formalism appropriate at zero temperature, where quantum fl…
In this paper we demonstrate a technique that can create out-of-equilibrium vortex configurations with almost arbitrary charge and geometry in a Bose-Einstein condensate. We coherently transfer orbital angular momentum from a holographically generated light beam to a Rubidium 87 condensate using a two-photon stimulated Raman process. Using matter wave interferometry, we verify the phase pattern imprinted onto the atomic wave function for a single vortex and a vortex-antivortex pair. In addition to their phase winding, the vortices created with this technique have an associated hyperfine spin t…
We report our research on disordered complex systems using cold gases and trapped ions, and address the possibility of using complex systems for quantum information processing. Two simple paradigmatic models of disordered complex systems are revisited here. The first one corresponds to a short range disordered Ising Hamiltonian (spin glasses), which can be implemented with a Bose-Fermi (Bose-Bose) mixture in a disordered optical lattice. The second model we address here is a long range disordered Hamiltonian, characteristic of neural networks (Hopfield model), which can be implemented in a cha…
This article is an attempt to provide a link between the quantum nonequilibrium dynamics of cold gases and fifty years of progress in the lowdimensional quantum chaos. We identify two atomic systems lying on the interface: two interacting atoms in a harmonic multimode waveguide and an interacting two-component Bose-Bose mixture in a double-well potential. In particular, we study the level spacing distribution, the wavefunction statistics, the eigenstate thermalization, and the ability to thermalize in a relaxation process as such.
We theoretically analyze the Bragg spectroscopic interferometer of two spatially separated atomic Bose-Einstein condensates that was experimentally realized by Saba et al. [Science 2005 v307 p1945] by continuously monitoring the relative phase evolution. Even though the atoms in the light-stimulated Bragg scattering interact with intense coherent laser beams, we show that the phase is created by quantum measurement-induced back-action on the homodyne photo-current of the lasers, opening possibilities for quantum-enhanced interferometric schemes. We identify two regimes of phase evolution: a ru…
We investigate magnetic phase in the bilayer system of ultra-cold bosons in an optical lattice, which is involved with Raman-induced spin-orbit (SO) coupling and laser-assisted interlayer tunneling. It is shown that there exit a rich of spin textures such as hetero ferromagnet, heterochiral magnet, chiral magnet with interlayer antiferromagnet. In particular, heterochiral magnet induced by SO coupling occurs extremely rarely in real solid-state materials. We present detailed experimental setup of realizing such a model in cold atom system.
The aim of this Tutorial is to present the basic mathematical techniques required for an accurate description of cold trapped atoms, both Bose and Fermi. The term {\it cold} implies that considered temperatures are low, such that quantum theory is necessary, even if temperatures are finite. And the term {\it atoms} means that the considered particles are structureless, being defined by their masses and mutual interactions. Atoms are {\it trapped} in the sense that they form a finite quantum system, though their number can be very large allowing for the use of the methods of statistical mechani…
A scheme is presented to perform an entangling gate between two atomic ensembles or Bose-Einstein condensates in a optical cavity with a common optical mode. The method involves using a generalized Stimulated Raman Adiabatic Passage (STIRAP) to adiabatically evolve the ground state. We show that dark states exist for any atom number within the cavities, and find that the operation produces an unusual type of evolution where the minimum of the number of atoms between two levels transitions to another state. This produces a unconventional type of entangling Hamiltonian which creates a phase depe…
We develop a stochastic Gross-Pitaveskii theory suitable for the study of Bose-Einstein condensation in a {\em rotating} dilute Bose gas. The theory is used to model the dynamical and equilibrium properties of a rapidly rotating Bose gas quenched through the critical point for condensation, as in the experiment of Haljan et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett., 87, 21043 (2001)]. In contrast to stirring a vortex-free condensate, where topological constraints require that vortices enter from the edge of the condensate, we find that phase defects in the initial non-condensed cloud are trapped en masse in the e…
In this paper we consider two models which exhibit equilibrium BEC superradiance. They are related to two different types of superradiant scattering observed in recent experiments. The first one corresponds to the amplification of matter-waves due to Raman superradiant scattering from a cigar-shaped BE condensate, when the recoiled and the condensed atoms are in different internal states. The main mechanism is stimulated Raman scattering in two-level atoms, which occurs in a superradiant way. Our second model is related to the superradiant Rayleigh scattering from a cigar-shaped BE condensate.…
We study the one-dimensional Bose-Hubbard model describing the superfluid-Mott insulator quantum phase transition of cold atoms in optical lattices. We show that derivatives of the variance of the on-site atom number occupation, computed with respect to the parameter driving the transition, have extrema that are located off the critical point even in the thermodynamic limit. We discuss whether such extrema provide solid evidence of the quantum Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless transition taking place in this system. The calculations are done for systems with the mean number of atoms per lattice …
We show that massive low energy particles traversing a branching zone or a crossing of quantum waveguides may experience a non standard trapping force that cannot be derived from a potential. For interacting cold Bose atoms we report on the formation of a localised Hartree ground state for three prototype waveguide geometries with broken translational symmetry: a cranked L-shaped waveguide L, a T-shaped waveguide T, and the crossing C of two quantum waveguides. The phenomenon is kinetic energy driven and cannot be described within the Thomas-Fermi approximation. Depending on the ratio of joini…