Mach-Zehnder Bragg interferometer for a Bose-Einstein Condensate

TL;DR

This paper presents a Mach-Zehnder interferometer using Bose-Einstein condensates and optical Bragg diffraction, achieving high contrast and potential for large-area applications like vortex detection and gravitational wave measurement.

Contribution

It introduces a novel interferometer design that utilizes all condensate atoms with high coherence, surpassing traditional diffraction-based interferometers.

Findings

Achieved nearly 100% interference contrast.

Utilized all condensate atoms for signal.

Potential for arbitrarily large enclosed area.

Abstract

We construct a Mach-Zehnder interferometer using Bose-Einstein condensed rubidium atoms and optical Bragg diffraction. In contrast to interferometers based on normal diffraction, where only a small percentage of the atoms contribute to the signal, our Bragg diffraction interferometer uses all the condensate atoms. The condensate coherence properties and high phase-space density result in an interference pattern of nearly 100% contrast. In principle, the enclosed area of the interferometer may be arbitrarily large, making it an ideal tool that could be used in the detection of vortices, or possibly even gravitational waves.