Atom reflection echoes and surface matter waves in atom meta-optics

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates how negative-index potentials can produce surface matter waves and atom reflection echoes, revealing a matter-wave analog of negative-index optical materials with potential applications in atom optics.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method to generate surface matter waves and reflection echoes using negative-index potentials, establishing a matter-wave counterpart to optical negative-index materials.

Findings

Evanescent matter waves can be back-refracted and reconstructed.

Surface matter waves are generated at the barrier interface.

Atom reflection echoes can be observed experimentally.

Abstract

Evanescent matter-waves produced by an atom wave packet incident onto a repulsive barrier edge can be back-refracted and reconstructed by the application of negative-index "comoving" potential pulses. One shows that those collapses and revivals of evanescent matter waves give rise to surface matter waves and should be observable via atom reflection echoes issued from the barrier interface. This property, together with the property of inducing negative refraction, makes such potentials the matter-wave counterpart of negative-index materials in light optics.