Dispersion Compensation for Atom Interferometry

Roberts, Tony; Cronin, Alexander D.; Tiberg, Martin Viktor; Pritchard, David E.

doi:10.1103/physrevlett.92.060405

Cited by 26 publications

(38 citation statements)

References 10 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The effect of an electric field gradient exists also and it has been used recently [21] for the compensation of phase dispersion in an atom interferometer. The Stark effect is quadratic in electric field and, in a 2 S 1/2 state, it is, with an excellent approximation, independent of the F, M F sublevel as a consequence of the Wigner-Eckart theorem.…”

Section: Fringe Visibility As a Function Of An Applied Magnetic Fimentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Previous experiments of this type include the measurement of the electric polarizability of sodium [20,21] and the measurement of the index of refraction of gases for sodium atomic waves [22,23], both experiments being done by D. Pritchard and co-workers. More recently, J. P. Toennies and coworkers have compared the electric polarizability of helium and helium dimer [24].…”

Section: B Our Main Choicesmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Lithium atom interferometer using laser diffraction: description and experiments

Miffre

Jacquey²,

Büchner³

et al. 2005

Eur. Phys. J. D

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We have built and operated an atom interferometer of the Mach-Zehnder type. The atomic wave is a supersonic beam of lithium seeded in argon and the mirrors and beam-splitters for the atomic wave are based on elastic Bragg diffraction on laser standing waves at λ = 671 nm. We give here a detailed description of our experimental setup and of the procedures used to align its components. We then present experimental signals, exhibiting atomic interference effects with a very high visibility, up to 84.5 ± 1 %. We describe a series of experiments testing the sensitivity of the fringe visibility to the main alignment defects and to the magnetic field gradient.

show abstract

Section: Fringe Visibility As a Function Of An Applied Magnetic Fimentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: B Our Main Choicesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Lithium atom interferometer using laser diffraction: description and experiments

Miffre

Jacquey²,

Büchner³

et al. 2005

Eur. Phys. J. D

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…This is possible only if the two beams are spatially separated so that a septum can be inserted between the two beams. This requirement could be suppressed by using an electric field with a gradient as in reference [9] but it seems difficult to use this arrangement for a high accuracy measurement, because an accurate knowledge of the values of the field and of its gradient at the location of the atomic beams would be needed. and end view as seen by an observer located on the atomic beam (lower panel).…”

Section: Principle Of the Measurementmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the present paper, we are going to describe in detail our experiment with emphasis on the improvements with respect to the experiments of D. Pritchard's group [4,9]: we have designed a capacitor with an analytically calculable electric field; we have obtained a considerably larger phase sensitivity, thanks to a large atomic flux and an excellent fringe visibility; finally our interferometer, which uses laser diffraction, is species selective: the contribution of any impurity (heavier alkali atoms, lithium dimers) to the signal can be neglected.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Atom interferometry measurement of the electric polarizability of lithium

Miffre

Jacquey²,

Büchner³

et al. 2006

Eur. Phys. J. D

123

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Using an atom interferometer, we have measured the static electric polarizability of 7 Li α = (24.33 ± 0.16) × 10 −30 m 3 = 164.19 ± 1.08 atomic units with a 0.66% uncertainty. Our experiment, which is similar to an experiment done on sodium in 1995 by D. Pritchard and co-workers, consists in applying an electric field on one of the two interfering beams and measuring the resulting phaseshift. With respect to D. Pritchard's experiment, we have made several improvements which are described in detail in this paper: the capacitor design is such that the electric field can be calculated analytically; the phase sensitivity of our interferometer is substantially better, near 16 mrad/ √ Hz; finally our interferometer is species selective so that impurities present in our atomic beam (other alkali atoms or lithium dimers) do not perturb our measurement. The extreme sensitivity of atom interferometry is well illustrated by our experiment: our measurement amounts to measuring a slight increase ∆v of the atom velocity v when it enters the electric field region and our present sensitivity is sufficient to detect a variation ∆v/v ≈ 6 × 10 −13 .

show abstract

“…2). Electron temperature evolution in an expanding UCP is a complicated problem and has been studied using various methods [5,16,17,18]. Using Doppler broadening of the ion optical absorption spectrum together with numerical simulation, T e (t) was observed to follow a self-similar analytic solution during the first 20 µs for T e (0) greater than 45K, that is T e = T e (0)/(1 + t 2 /τ 2 0 ) [17].…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Ultracold Plasma Expansion in a Magnetic Field

et al. 2008

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We measure the expansion of an ultracold plasma across the field lines of a uniform magnetic field. We image the ion distribution by extracting the ions with a high voltage pulse onto a positionsensitive detector. Early in the lifetime of the plasma (< 20 µs), the size of the image is dominated by the time-of-flight Coulomb explosion of the dense ion cloud. For later times, we measure the 2-D Gaussian width of the ion image, obtaining the transverse expansion velocity as a function of magnetic field (up to 70 G). We observe that the expansion velocity scales as B −1/2 , explained by a nonlinear ambipolar diffusion model with anisotropic diffusion in two different directions.PACS numbers: 52.25. Xz, 52.55.Dy Plasma expansion in a uniform magnetic field is of interest in astrophysical, ionospheric, and laser-produced plasma applications. The presence of a magnetic field during expansion can initiate various phenomena, such as plasma confinement and plasma instabilities [1]. Ultracold plasmas (UCPs), formed by photoionizing lasercooled atoms near the ionization limit, have system parameters many orders of magnitude away from traditional laser-produced plasmas, with electron and ion temperatures on the order of meV, or even µeV, and densities of 10 5 to 10 10 cm −3 . UCPs thus provide a testing ground to study basic plasma theory in a clean and simple system, and we need fields of only tens of Gauss to observe significant effects on the expansion dynamics (for our system the electrons are magnetized, while the ions are not). All previous studies of ultracold plasma expansion, both experimental [2,3,4,5] and theoretical [6,7,8,9], focus on free expansion in the absence of magnetic fields.In this work, we present the first measurement of UCP expansion in a magnetic field. By extracting the ions with a high voltage pulse onto a position-sensitive detector, we image the ion distribution of an UCP expanding in a uniform magnetic field. Early in the lifetime of the plasma, the image size is dominated by the timeof-flight Coulomb explosion of the dense ion cloud. At about 20 µs the image size is at a minimum and then afterwards increases, reflecting the true size of the expanding plasma. The expansion is self-similar, as the ion cloud maintains a Gaussian density profile throughout the lifetime of the plasma. By 2-D Gaussian fitting of the ion image, we obtain the width transverse to the applied magnetic field. In the absence of a magnetic field, the plasma expansion velocity at different initial electron temperatures (T e ) matches the result obtained by measuring the plasma oscillation frequency [2, 10]. As we increase the field up to 70 G, we find that the transverse expansion velocity decreases, roughly scaling as B −1/2 . This field dependence is well explained by an ambipolar diffusion model which involves anisotropic diffusion in two different directions: the diffusion rate is almost unaffected in the direction along the magnetic field, while it is reduced in the direction normal to the field. A critical feature ...

show abstract

Dispersion Compensation for Atom Interferometry

Cited by 26 publications

References 10 publications

Lithium atom interferometer using laser diffraction: description and experiments

Lithium atom interferometer using laser diffraction: description and experiments

Atom interferometry measurement of the electric polarizability of lithium

Ultracold Plasma Expansion in a Magnetic Field

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About