Soliton interferometry with very narrow barriers obtained from spatially dependent dressed states

TL;DR

This paper proposes a novel soliton interferometry scheme using a spatially dependent dark state to create very narrow barriers, overcoming laser wavelength limitations, and demonstrates its potential through numerical analysis.

Contribution

It introduces a new method to generate ultra-narrow barriers for soliton interferometry using geometric scalar potentials in dark states.

Findings

Numerical simulations show effective barrier formation beyond laser wavelength limits.

The proposed scheme maintains soliton coherence for interferometry.

Deviations from ideal conditions are analyzed for robustness.

Abstract

Bright solitons in atomic Bose--Einstein condensates are strong candidates for high precision matter-wave interferometry, as their inherent stability against dispersion supports long interrogation times. An analog to a beam splitter is then a narrow potential barrier. A very narrow barrier is desirable for interferometric purposes, but in a typical realisation using a blue-detuned optical dipole potential, the width is limited by the laser wavelength. We investigate a soliton interferometry scheme using the geometric scalar potential experienced by atoms in a spatially dependent dark state to overcome this limit. We propose a possible implementation and numerically probe the effects of deviations from the ideal configuration.