Improve the performance of interferometer with ultra-cold atoms

Ultra-cold atoms provide ideal platforms for interferometry.The macroscopic matter-wave property of ultra-cold atoms leads to large coherent length and long coherent time,which enable high accuracy and sensitivity to measurement.Here,we review our efforts to improve the performance of the interferometer.We demonstrate a shortcut method for manipulating ultra-cold atoms in an optical lattice.Compared with traditional ones,this shortcut method can reduce the manipulation time by up to three orders of magnitude.We construct a matter-wave Ramsey interferometer for trapped motional quantum states and significantly increase its coherence time by one order of magnitude with an echo technique based on this method.Efforts have also been made to enhance the resolution by multimode scheme.Application of a noise-resilient multi-component interferometer shows that increasing the number of paths could sharpen the peaks in the time-domain interference fringes,which leads to a resolution nearly twice compared with that of a conventional double-path two-mode interferometer.With the shortcut method mentioned above,improvement of the momentum resolution could also be fulfilled,which leads to atomic momentum patterns less than 0.6hkL. To identify and remove systematic noises,we introduce the methods based on the principal component analysis (PCA) that reduce the noise in detection close to the 1/√2 of the photon-shot noise and separate and identify or even eliminate noises.Furthermore,we give a proposal to measure precisely the local gravity acceleration within a few centimeters based on our study of ultracold atoms in precision measurements.     

Asymmetric Superradiant Scattering Patterns from Bose--Einstein Condensates

The asymmetric patterns of superradiance from Bose-Einstein condensates are studied for the spatially inhomogeneous pump pulse with the semiclassical Maxwell-Schrodinger equations. The coupling dynamics between the optical field and condensate in the strong pulse and a faded wing in the weak coupling regime are discussed, which not only explain the spatial effects in the process of superradiance, but also supply a new method to control its patterns.     

Microwave Atomic Clock in the Optical Lattice with Specific Frequency

A scheme for a microwave atomic clock is proposed for Cs or Rb atoms trapped in a blue detuned optical lattice. The ac Stark shift of the clock transition due to a trapping laser is calculated. We analyze it at some specific laser wavelength. Compared with the case of the fountain clock, the cavity related shifts, the collision shift and the Doppler effect are eliminated or suppressed dramatically in an atomic lattice clock. By analyzing various sources of clock uncertainty, a microwave atomic lattice clock with a high accuracy and small volume is feasible.     

A diode laser spectrometer at 634nm and absolute frequency measurements using optical frequency comb

This paper reports that two identical external-cavity-diode-laser (ECDL) based spectrometers are constructed at 634 nm referencing on the hyperfine B-X transition R(80)8-4 of ¹²⁷I₂. The lasers are stabilized on the Doppler-free absorption signals using the third-harmonic detection technique. The instability of the stabilized laser is measured to be 2.8×10^-12 (after 1000 s) by counting the beat note between the two lasers. The absolute optical frequency of the transition is, for the first time, determined to be 472851936189.5 kHz by using an optical frequency comb referenced on the microwave caesium atomic clock. The uncertainty of the measurement is less than 4.9 kHz.     

A Method for Determining the Phase Transition Point of the Bose-Einstein Condensation by Judging the Fitting Errors

In this paper, We demonstrate an approach to determine the phase transition point and critical temperature of Bose-Einstein condensation. During the fitting sequence of time-of-flight images, for just one picture we take four kinds of different calculations instead of only one. By calculating the quantitative least-square errors, which have always been neglected before, we find out that this value can act as a criterion to judge the status of atom clouds. Using this criterion, we can not only discriminate the status around the phase transition point, but can also find the critical point precisely. Also with this method, we can achieve the totally automatical running of calculating programs without human＇s judgments.     

北京大学玻色-爱因斯坦凝聚的实现及研究进展

在这里我们报道北京大学玻色-爱因斯坦凝聚的实现和研究进展.观察到单个和多个组分的87 Rb玻色-爱因斯坦凝聚的形成.介绍了北京大学玻色-爱因斯坦凝聚的实验系统,包括达到10-11毫巴的双磁光阱超高真空系统,大功率半导体激光系统,激光稳频和频率控制系统, QUIC磁阱及磁阱的控制系统,蒸发冷却系统,吸收成像和CCD数据采集处理系统,LabVIEW时序控制系统.     

玻色-爱因斯坦凝聚特性及其应用

本文介绍了北京大学建立的玻色-爱因斯坦凝聚实验平台，实现了玻色-爱因斯坦凝聚（图1），获得了原子数为五十万个，温度为50纳开尔文的玻色凝聚体。在此基础上我们精密测量了玻色-爱因斯坦凝聚的相变温度，还利用玻色-爱因斯坦凝聚实验平台通过马越让那跃迁获得了可控的多量子态玻色爱因斯坦凝聚体。并利用四种方法获得了原子激光（图2），其中有三种方法是国际上第一次使用。另外，我们提出了将玻色一爱因斯坦凝聚转入Magic光晶格阱，实现精度优于10^-17的新型原子钟的设想。     

物质的新状态——玻色-爱因斯坦凝聚——2001年诺贝尔物理奖介绍

美国国家标准和技术研究所的Eric A.Cornell教授，美国麻省理工学院的Wolfgang Ketterle教授与美国科罗拉多大学的Car E.Wieman教授由于“在稀薄的碱金属气体中成功地获得玻色－爱因斯坦凝聚，并且对凝聚体特性进行的早期基础性研究”方面的贡献，而荣获2001年诺贝尔物理奖，文章介绍了该研究的背景，三位诺贝尔奖得主的贡献及其意义。     

Phase-Dependent Effects in Stern-Gerlach Experiments

In the frame of quantum mechanics, we consider an ensemble of spin-1/2 neutral particles passing through a Stern-Gerlach apparatus and explore how their motions depend on the initial phase difference between two internal spin states. Assuming the particles moving along y-axis, due to the initial phase difference between spin states, they not only split along the longitudinal direction （z-axis） but also separate along the lateral direction （x-axis）. The dependence of the lateral displacement on the initial phase difference reminds one of the picture of a quantum interference. This generalized interference provides an alternative approach to measuring the initial phase difference. The experimental realization with ultracold atoms or Bose-Einstein condensates is also discussed.     

High performance of semiconductor optical amplifier available for cold atom physics research

We present a novel design of a compact, stable, and easy-adjustable semiconductor optical amplifier （SOA） system. This SOA system is capable of providing up to 560-roW laser power at the wavelength of 852 nm. For the continuous-wave （CW） seeding laser, the amplification gain can reach 18 dB. We add amplitude modulation onto the CW laser and measure the modulation amplification between seeding and output laser. The amplification gain remains constant within the frequency range from 10 Hz to 1 MHz. The whole system could work in ultra-stable condition： for CW seeding laser, the fluctuation of output power is less than 0.33% in several hours.