Exploiting soliton decay and phase fluctuations in atom chip interferometry of Bose-Einstein condensates

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates how soliton decay and phase fluctuations can be exploited in atom chip interferometry to measure phase differences in Bose-Einstein condensates, enhancing sensitivity to phase patterns and atomic motion.

Contribution

It introduces a novel mechanism using soliton decay into vortices for phase measurement in BEC interferometry, accounting for temperature effects and phase fluctuations.

Findings

Resonant vortex production at low temperatures for anti-phase clouds.

Phase fluctuations at higher temperatures lead to vortex creation over a broad phase range.

Maximizing vortex count enhances interferometer sensitivity to phase variations.

Abstract

We show that the decay of a soliton into vortices provides a mechanism for measuring the initial phase difference between two merging Bose-Einstein condensates. At very low temperatures, the mechanism is resonant, operating only when the clouds start in anti-phase. But at higher temperatures, phase fluctuations trigger vortex production over a wide range of initial relative phase, as observed in recent experiments at MIT. Choosing the merge time to maximize the number of vortices created makes the interferometer highly sensitive to spatially varying phase patterns and hence atomic movement.