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Title: Parametric Amplification of Scattered Atom Pairs

Journal Article · · Physical Review Letters
; ; ; ; ;  [1]
  1. MIT-Harvard Center for Ultracold Atoms, Research Laboratory of Electronics and Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139 (United States)

We have observed parametric generation and amplification of ultracold atom pairs. A {sup 87}Rb Bose-Einstein condensate was loaded into a one-dimensional optical lattice with quasimomentum k{sub 0} and spontaneously scattered into two final states with quasimomenta k{sub 1} and k{sub 2}. Furthermore, when a seed of atoms was first created with quasimomentum k{sub 1} we observed parametric amplification of scattered atoms pairs in states k{sub 1} and k{sub 2} when the phase-matching condition was fulfilled. This process is analogous to optical parametric generation and amplification of photons and could be used to efficiently create entangled pairs of atoms. Furthermore, these results explain the dynamic instability of condensates in moving lattices observed in recent experiments.

OSTI ID:
20775030
Journal Information:
Physical Review Letters, Vol. 96, Issue 2; Other Information: DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.96.020406; (c) 2006 The American Physical Society; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0031-9007
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English