Detection of Weak Force using a Bose-Einstein Condensate

TL;DR

This paper explores using a Bose-Einstein Condensate in an optomechanical setup to detect weak forces by enhancing cooling and signal-to-noise ratio through atomic interactions.

Contribution

It demonstrates that atomic two-body interactions in a BEC can be used to improve force detection sensitivity and noise reduction in a hybrid quantum device.

Findings

Atomic interactions enable mirror cooling via stochastic techniques.

Atomic interactions increase SNR in spectral measurements.

Position squeezing is achieved for sensitive force detection.

Abstract

We investigate the possibility of detecting a weak coherent force by means of a hybrid optomechanical quantum device formed by a Bose Einstein Condensate (BEC) confined in a high quality factor optical cavity with an oscillatory end mirror. We show using the stochastic cooling technique that the atomic two-body interaction can be utilized to cool the mirror and achieve position squeezing essential for making sensitive measurements of weak forces. We further show that the atomic two-body interaction can also increase the signal to noise ratio (SNR) and decrease the noise of the off-resonant stationary spectral measurements.