A spinor Bose-Einstein condensate phase-sensitive amplifier for SU(1,1) interferometry

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a spinor Bose-Einstein condensate-based phase-sensitive amplifier for SU(1,1) interferometry, showing enhanced phase sensitivity beyond the standard quantum limit through both simulation and experimental implementation.

Contribution

It introduces a novel atomic SU(1,1) interferometer using spinor BECs as parametric amplifiers, with experimental control over phase sensitivity and initial populations.

Findings

Double-sided seeding creates a phase-sensitive amplifier with optimal sensitivity.

Sensitivity beyond the standard quantum limit is achieved with proper phase control.

Experimental demonstration with $^{23}$Na BEC shows control over initial phase and population fractions.

Abstract

The SU(1,1) interferometer was originally conceived as a Mach-Zehnder interferometer with the beam-splitters replaced by parametric amplifiers. The parametric amplifiers produce states with correlations that result in enhanced phase sensitivity. $F=1$ spinor Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) can serve as the parametric amplifiers for an atomic version of such an interferometer by collisionally producing entangled pairs of $\left<F=1,m=\pm1\right|$ atoms. We simulate the effect of single and double-sided seeding of the inputs to the amplifier using the truncated-Wigner approximation. We find that single-sided seeding degrades the performance of the interferometer exactly at the phase the unseeded interferometer should operate the best. Double-sided seeding results in a phase-sensitive amplifier, where the maximal sensitivity is a function of the phase relationship between the input states of the amplifier. In both single and double-sided seeding we find there exists an optimal phase shift that achieves sensitivity beyond the standard quantum limit. Experimentally, we demonstrate a spinor phase-sensitive amplifier using a BEC of $^{23}$Na in an optical dipole trap. This configuration could be used as an input to such an interferometer. We are able to control the initial phase of the double-seeded amplifier, and demonstrate sensitivity to initial population fractions as small as 0.1\%.