Order in the interference of a long chain of Bose condensates with unrestricted phases

TL;DR

This paper investigates how phase differences in a long chain of Bose condensates influence their interference patterns and evolution, revealing that phase disorder can induce spatial order and alter the Talbot effect.

Contribution

It demonstrates the impact of phase differences on interference patterns in Bose condensate chains, highlighting how phase disorder affects the Talbot effect and spatial order formation.

Findings

Equal phases lead to the Talbot effect with periodic density reappearance

Phase disorder induces spatial order in interference patterns

Small phase differences can qualitatively change the evolution of fringes

Abstract

For a long periodic chain of Bose condensates prepared in the free space, the subsequent evolution and interference dramatically depend on the difference between the phases of the adjacent and more distant condensates. If the phases are equal, the initial periodic density distribution reappears at later times, which is known as the Talbot effect. For randomly-related phases, we have found that a spatial order also appears in the interference, while the evolution of the fringes differs with the Talbot effect qualitatively. Even a small phase disorder is sufficient for qualitatively altering the interference, though maybe at long evolution times. This effect may be used for measuring the amount of coherence between adjacent condensates and the correlation length along the chain.