Solution and testing of the Abraham-Minkowski controversy in light-atom interacting system

TL;DR

This paper resolves the longstanding Abraham-Minkowski controversy in light-atom systems by demonstrating how atomic coherence affects the preferred momentum form of light and atoms, with practical verification methods suggested.

Contribution

It provides a specific solution to the Abraham-Minkowski controversy in laser-atom systems, linking atomic coherence to the choice of momentum form and proposing experimental verification.

Findings

Coherent atomic systems favor Minkowski and canonical momenta.

Incoherent atomic systems favor Abraham and kinetic momenta.

The solution can be experimentally tested with current optical lattice techniques.

Abstract

We present the origin of the Abraham-Minkowski controversy of light-matter wave interacting system, which is a special case of the centaury-old Abraham-Minkowski controversy. We solve the controversy of laser-atom interacting case and find that for systems with perfect atomic spatial coherence, the systems prefer to show Minkowski momentum and canonical momentum for the atoms and light, respectively; while for the systems where the atoms are spatially incoherent, the momenta of light and atoms would choose the Abraham and kinetic forms. The provement of our solution can be realized with current techniques, using three-dimensional optical lattices and electromagnetically-induced absorption (EIA) to distinguish the kinetic and canonical recoil momentum of ultra-cold atoms.