Interference of Bose-Einstein condensates and entangled single-atom state in a spin-dependent optical lattice

TL;DR

This paper presents a theoretical model demonstrating that entanglement of a single atom can cause interference in Bose-Einstein condensates within a spin-dependent optical lattice, aligning with experimental observations.

Contribution

The work introduces a model showing that single-atom entanglement alone can produce interference patterns, independent of condensate phase relations.

Findings

Theoretical results match observed interference patterns.

Interference arises from single-atom entanglement, not condensate phase differences.

Proposes experimental test for nonuniform phase distribution.

Abstract

We present a theoretical model to investigate the interference of an array of Bose-Einstein condensates loaded in a one-dimensional spin-dependent optical lattice, which is based on an assumption that for the atoms in the entangled single-atom state between the internal and the external degrees of freedom each atom interferes only with itself. Our theoretical results agree well with the interference patterns observed in a recent experiment by Mandel et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 91, 010407 (2003)]. In addition, an experimental suggestion of nonuniform phase distribution is proposed to test further our theoretical model and prediction. The present work shows that the entanglement of a single atom is sufficient for the interference of the condensates confined in a spin-dependent optical lattice and this interference is irrelevant with the phases of individual condensates, i.e., this interference arises only between each condensate and itself and there is no interference effect between two arbitrary different condensates.