Momentum-space engineering of gaseous Bose-Einstein condensates

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates how to precisely shape the momentum distribution of Bose-Einstein condensates using sequences of laser pulses, enabling tailored quantum states for advanced atom-interferometry applications.

Contribution

It generalizes previous two-pulse methods to N-pulse sequences, allowing customizable momentum distributions with high fidelity.

Findings

Multiple momentum distributions can be engineered with high accuracy.

Two or three pulses suffice for important distributions in interferometry.

Theoretical framework validated by earlier experiments.

Abstract

We show how the momentum distribution of gaseous Bose--Einstein condensates can be shaped by applying a sequence of standing-wave laser pulses. We present a theory, whose validity for was demonstrated in an earlier experiment [L.\ Deng, et al., \prl {\bf 83}, 5407 (1999)], of the effect of a two-pulse sequence on the condensate wavefunction in momentum space. We generalize the previous result to the case of $N$ pulses of arbitrary intensity separated by arbitrary intervals and show how these parameters can be engineered to produce a desired final momentum distribution. We find that several momentum distributions, important in atom-interferometry applications, can be engineered with high fidelity with two or three pulses.