Entangled Matter-waves for Quantum Enhanced Sensing

TL;DR

This paper introduces a method to generate and control entanglement in ultracold atoms within a cavity, enabling quantum-enhanced sensing and simulation through motional state manipulation without electronic interactions.

Contribution

It presents a novel approach to create and control motional entanglement in atoms via cavity-induced interactions, including density grating formation and one-axis twisting, without electronic coupling.

Findings

Cavity frequency shifts induce squeezing interactions between atomic momentum states.

Formation of atomic density gratings leads to collective motion and entanglement.

The system functions as a tunable many-body quantum sensor and simulator.

Abstract

The ability to create and harness entanglement is crucial to the fields of quantum sensing and simulation, and ultracold atom-cavity systems offer pristine platforms for this undertaking. Here, we present a method for creating and controlling entanglement between solely the motional states of atoms in a cavity without the need for electronic interactions. We show this interaction arises from a general atom-cavity model, and discuss the role of the cavity frequency shift in response to atomic motion. This cavity response leads to many different squeezing interactions between the atomic momentum states. Furthermore, we show that when the atoms form a density grating, the collective motion leads to one-axis twisting, a many-body energy gap, and metrologically useful entanglement even in the presence of noise. Noteably, an experiment has recently demonstrated this regime leads to an effective momentum-exchange interaction between atoms in a common cavity mode. This system offers a highly tunable, many-body quantum sensor and simulator.