Tarik Berrada, Sandrine van Frank, Robert Bücker, Thorsten Schumm, Jean-François Schaff, Jörg Schmiedmayer
Quantum mechanical particle-wave duality enables the construction of interferometers for matter waves, which may complement lasers in precision measurement devices such as gravimeters or gyroscopes. This requires the development of atom-optics analogs to beam splitters, phase shifters, and recombiners. Realizing and integrating these elements into a transportable device has been a long-standing goal. Here we demonstrate the realization of a full Mach-Zehnder sequence with trapped atomic Bose-Einstein condensates (BEC) confined on an atom chip. Particle interactions in our BEC matter waves lead to an intrinsic non-linearity, absent in photon optics. We exploit these interactions to generate a non-classical state with reduced number fluctuations as an input to the interferometer. Making use of spatially separated wave packets, a controlled phase shift is applied and read out by a diabatic matter-wave recombiner. We demonstrate coherence times a factor of three beyond what is expected for a classical coherent state, highlighting the potential of entanglement as a resource for metrology. Our results pave the way towards integrated quantum-enhanced matter-wave sensors.
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http://arxiv.org/abs/1303.1030
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