All-optical Imprinting of Geometric Phases onto Matter Waves

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates how to optically imprint both Abelian and non-Abelian geometric phases onto matter waves, enabling robust control and novel phenomena like wavepacket re-direction and splitting.

Contribution

It introduces a method for optical imprinting of geometric phases onto matter waves, expanding the control capabilities beyond traditional dynamical methods.

Findings

Geometric phases can be imprinted onto matter waves using optical methods.

Imprinting of geometric phases enables wavepacket re-direction and splitting.

The approach offers robust control of matter waves with potential applications.

Abstract

Traditional optical phase imprinting of matter waves is of a dynamical nature. In this paper we show that both Abelian and non-Abelian geometric phases can be optically imprinted onto matter waves, yielding a number of interesting phenomena such as wavepacket re-directing and wavepacket splitting. In addition to their fundamental interest, our results open up new opportunities for robust optical control of matter waves.