https://doi.org/10.1007/s100530170277
Manipulating a Bose-Einstein condensate with a single photon
Institut für Theoretische Physik,
Universität Innsbruck, Technikerstr. 25, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria
Corresponding author: a peter.horak@uibk.ac.at
Received:
26
June
2000
Revised:
2
October
2000
Published online: 15 February 2001
We propose a method to create macroscopic superpositions, so-called Schrödinger cat states, of different motional states of an ideal Bose-Einstein condensate. The scheme is based on the scattering of a freely expanding condensate by the light field of a high-finesse optical cavity in a quantum superposition state of different photon numbers. The atom-photon interaction creates an entangled state of the motional state of the condensate and the photon number, which can be converted into a pure atomic Schrödinger cat state by operations only acting on the cavity field. We discuss in detail the fully quantised theory and propose an experimental procedure to implement the scheme using short coherent light pulses.
PACS: 03.65.Bz – Foundations, theory of measurement, miscellaneous theories (including Aharonov-Bohm effect, Bell inequalities, Berry's phase) / 03.75.Fi – Phase coherent atomic ensembles; quantum condensation phenomena / 42.50.Ct – Quantum description of interaction of light and matter; related experiments
© EDP Sciences, Società Italiana di Fisica, Springer-Verlag, 2001
