News & Events

About

This page contains a single entry from the blog posted on September 4, 2013 1:29 PM.

The previous post in this blog was Seminar: Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2013 at 3:30 pm.

The next post in this blog is PhD Proposal - Dan Jones.

Many more can be found on the main index page or by looking through the archives.

Powered by
Movable Type 3.34

« Seminar: Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2013 at 3:30 pm | Main | PhD Proposal - Dan Jones »

Seminar: Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2013 at 3:30 pm

Quantum interference of expanding BEC in microgravity
Vincenzo Tamma
Institut fur Quantenphysik, Universitat Ulm

Interferometry with expanding Bose-Einstein condensate in microgravity can be exploited to probe fundamental physics at the border between quantum mechanics and general relativity.

In particular millions of atoms in a BEC can be described by a single macroscopic wave function which o ers itself for quantum interference experiments aimed to test the weak equivalence principle.

In this talk I will describe the physics behind the BEC expansion and interference in microgravity in the time-dependent Thomas-Fermi (TF) regime in generic interferometric con gurations and taking into account rst order corrections in perturbation theory.

In particular, by using an asymmetric Mach-Zehender con guration interference fringes for expanding BEC in microgravity have been recently observed in pioneering experiments within our QUANTUS collaboration

[1]. Such experiments not only represent a perfect test for future experiments in orbit but also gives us an important motivation in pursuing further exciting research based on quantum gravimeters for ground based applications.

[1] 1. H. Muentinga, et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 093602 (2013) (Viewpoint: M. Arndt, Physics 6, 23 (2013)).

Location: Physics Bldg., Room 401