Toward a test of angular momentum coherence in a twin-atom interferometer

TL;DR

This paper proposes an atomic interferometer setup to test and quantify the angular momentum coherence of molecular fragments, enabling differentiation between spin-coherent and spin-incoherent dissociation processes.

Contribution

It introduces a novel interferometric scheme to measure angular momentum coherence in dissociated molecules, akin to twin-photon interferometers, with potential applications in coherent twin-atom optics.

Findings

The setup can distinguish spin-coherent from spin-incoherent dissociation.

It allows estimation of the purity of the angular momentum density matrix.

Potential use in assessing molecule dissociation processes for quantum optics.

Abstract

We present a scheme well-suited to investigate quantitatively the angular momentum coherence of molecular fragments. Assuming that the dissociated molecule has a null total angular momentum, we investigate the propagation of the corresponding atomic fragments in the apparatus. We show that the envisioned interferometer enables one to distinguish unambiguously a spin-coherent from a spin-incoherent dissociation, as well as to estimate the purity of the angular momentum density matrix associated with the fragments. This setup, which may be seen as an atomic analogue of a twin-photon interferometer, can be used to investigate the suitability of molecule dissociation processes -- such as the metastable hydrogen atoms H($2^2 S$)-H($2^2 S$) dissociation - for coherent twin-atom optics.