Measurement of the Casimir-Polder force through center-of-mass oscillations of a Bose-Einstein condensate

Harber, D.; Obrecht, John; McGuirk, Jeffrey; Cornell, Eric A.

doi:10.1103/physreva.72.033610

Cited by 249 publications

(250 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…The possibility of investigating the gravitational force at small distances by atomic sensors was proposed in [21], discussed in detail in [22], and preliminarily demonstrated in [23]. Deviations from the Newtonian law are usually described assuming a Yukawa-type potential…”

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confidence: 99%

Long-Lived Bloch Oscillations with Bosonic Sr Atoms and Application to Gravity Measurement at the Micrometer Scale

et al. 2006

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We report on the observation of Bloch oscillations on the unprecedented time scale of several seconds. The experiment is carried out with ultracold bosonic 88 Sr atoms loaded into a vertical optical standing wave. The negligible atom-atom elastic cross section and zero angular momentum in the ground state makes 88 Sr an almost ideal Bose gas, insensitive to typical mechanisms of decoherence due to thermalization and external stray fields. The small size of the system enables precision measurements of forces at micrometer scale. This is a challenge in physics for studies of surfaces, Casimir effects, and searches for deviations from Newtonian gravity predicted by theories beyond the standard model. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.97.060402 PACS numbers: 03.75.ÿb, 04.80.ÿy, 32.80.ÿt Quantum devices based on ultracold atoms show unprecedented features. Atom interferometry is used for precision inertial sensors [1,2], to measure fundamental constants [3][4][5], and for testing relativity [6].Here we show that, using laser-cooled strontium atoms in optical lattices, persistent Bloch oscillations are observed for a time ' 10 s, and gravity is determined with ppm sensitivity on a micrometer scale. The small size enables precision measurements of forces at micrometer scale. This is a challenge in physics for studies of surfaces, Casimir effects [7], and searches for deviations from Newtonian gravity predicted by theories beyond the standard model [8,9]. The insensitivity to stray fields and collisions makes Sr in optical lattices, a candidate also for future clocks [10], a unique sensor for small-scale forces with better performances and reduced complexity compared to proposed schemes using degenerate Bose [11] or Fermi [12] gases. This enables new experiments on gravity at unexplored short distances.The confinement of ultracold atoms in optical lattices, regular structures created by interfering laser beams where the atoms are trapped by the dipole force, provides clean model systems to study condensed-matter physics problems [13]. In particular, under the influence of a periodic potential and a weak uniform force, the atomic momentum changes periodically across the first Brillouin zone, a phenomenon known as Bloch oscillations [14]. Bloch oscillations were predicted for electrons in a periodic crystal potential in the presence of a static electric field [15] but could not be observed in natural crystals because of the scattering of electrons by the lattice defects. They were directly observed using atoms in an optical lattice [16].In our experiment, laser-cooled 88 Sr atoms are trapped in a one-dimensional vertical optical lattice. The combination of the periodic optical potential and the linear gravitational potential gives rise to Bloch oscillations at a frequency B given bywhere m is the atomic mass, g is the acceleration of gravity, L is the wavelength of the light producing the lattice, and h is Planck constant. Since L , m, and h are well known, the force along the lattice axis can be determined by measuring the B...

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confidence: 99%

Long-Lived Bloch Oscillations with Bosonic Sr Atoms and Application to Gravity Measurement at the Micrometer Scale

et al. 2006

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“…So far, experiments have dealt with atoms prepared in the electronic ground state, due to their intrinsic stability. Despite their weak interactions, ground-state atoms on atom chips have been used to sensitively probe the intrinsic thermal noise near surfaces [3][4][5], map magnetic and electric field distributions [6][7][8][9][10][11], and investigate the Casimir-Polder potential in the micrometer range [12][13][14]. Comparatively, atoms excited to high-lying Rydberg states have extremely large transition dipole moments (scaling with n 2 ) resulting in long-range interactions and have large electric polarizabilities (∝ n 7 ) which can greatly enhance both atomatom and atom-surface interactions.…”

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Spatially resolved excitation of Rydberg atoms and surface effects on an atom chip

et al. 2010

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General rightsIt is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), other than for strictly personal, individual use, unless the work is under an open content license (like Creative Commons). Disclaimer/Complaints regulationsIf you believe that digital publication of certain material infringes any of your rights or (privacy) interests, please let the Library know, stating your reasons. In case of a legitimate complaint, the Library will make the material inaccessible and/or remove it from the website. Please Ask the Library: http://uba.uva.nl/en/contact, or a letter to: Library of the University of Amsterdam, Secretariat, Singel 425, 1012 WP Amsterdam, The Netherlands. You will be contacted as soon as possible. We demonstrate spatially resolved, coherent excitation of Rydberg atoms on an atom chip. Electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) is used to investigate the properties of the Rydberg atoms near the gold-coated chip surface. We measure distance-dependent shifts (∼10 MHz) of the Rydberg energy levels caused by a spatially inhomogeneous electric field. The measured field strength and distance dependence is in agreement with a simple model for the electric field produced by a localized patch of Rb adsorbates deposited on the chip surface during experiments. The EIT resonances remain narrow (<4 MHz) and the observed widths are independent of atom-surface distance down to ∼20 µm, indicating relatively long lifetime of the Rydberg states. Our results open the way to studies of dipolar physics, collective excitations, quantum metrology, and quantum information processing involving interacting Rydberg excited atoms on atom chips.

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“…Precise theoretical modelling of Casimir forces takes into account effects such as surface roughness, finite conductivity, substrate geometry, and nonzero temperature, but the latter term has never been unambiguously observed experimentally (see [11] and references therein). In earlier Casimir [4,12,13,14,15,16] and CasimirPolder [9,17,18,19,20,21,22,23] experiments, thermal effects were predicted to be on the order of experimental uncertainties or less because (a) the temperature of the apparatus could not be varied over a large range and (b) the experiments worked over small separations compared to the wavelength of thermal radiation, where thermal corrections are small.…”

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Measurement of the Temperature Dependence of the Casimir-Polder Force

Obrecht¹,

Wild²,

Antezza³

et al. 2007

Phys. Rev. Lett.

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548

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We report on the first measurement of a temperature dependence of the Casimir-Polder force. This measurement was obtained by positioning a nearly pure 87 Rb Bose-Einstein condensate a few microns from a dielectric substrate and exciting its dipole oscillation. Changes in the collective oscillation frequency of the magnetically trapped atoms result from spatial variations in the surfaceatom force. In our experiment, the dielectric substrate is heated up to 605 K, while the surrounding environment is kept near room temperature (310 K). The effect of the Casimir-Polder force is measured to be nearly 3 times larger for a 605 K substrate than for a room-temperature substrate, showing a clear temperature dependence in agreement with theory.

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Measurement of the Casimir-Polder force through center-of-mass oscillations of a Bose-Einstein condensate

Cited by 249 publications

References 26 publications

Long-Lived Bloch Oscillations with Bosonic Sr Atoms and Application to Gravity Measurement at the Micrometer Scale

Long-Lived Bloch Oscillations with Bosonic Sr Atoms and Application to Gravity Measurement at the Micrometer Scale

Spatially resolved excitation of Rydberg atoms and surface effects on an atom chip

Measurement of the Temperature Dependence of the Casimir-Polder Force

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