132 research outputs found
Creation of macroscopic superpositions of flow states with Bose-Einstein condensates
We present a straightforward scheme for creating macroscopic superpositions
of different superfluid flow states of Bose-Einstein condensates trapped in
optical lattices. This scheme has the great advantage that all the techniques
required are achievable with current experiments. Furthermore, the relative
difficulty of creating cats scales favorably with the size of the cat. This
means that this scheme may be well-suited to creating superpositions involving
large numbers of particles. Such states may have interesting technological
applications such as making quantum-limited measurements of angular momentum.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figure
Entanglement and nonlocality of a single relativistic particle
Recent work has argued that the concepts of entanglement and nonlocality must
be taken seriously even in systems consisting of only a single particle. These
treatments, however, are nonrelativistic and, if single particle entanglement
is fundamental, it should also persist in a relativistic description. Here we
consider a spin-1/2 particle in a superposition of two different velocities as
viewed by an observer in a different relativistically-boosted inertial frame.
We show that the entanglement survives right up to the speed of light and that
the boosted observer would see single-particle violations of Bell's inequality.
We also discuss how quantum gates could be implemented in this way and the
possible implications for quantum information processing.Comment: 4 page
Precision measurement with an optical Josephson junction
We study a new type of Josephson device, the so-called "optical Josephson
junction" as proposed in Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 95}, 170402 (2005). Two
condensates are optically coupled through a waveguide by a pair of Bragg beams.
This optical Josephson junction is analogous to the usual Josephson junction of
two condensates weakly coupled via tunneling. We discuss the use of this
optical Josephson junction, for making precision measurements.Comment: 6 pages, 1 figur
Excitations of Bose-Einstein condensates in optical lattices
In this paper we examine the excitations observable in atoms confined in an
optical lattice around the superfluid-insulator transition. We use increases in
the number variance of atoms, subsequent to tilting the lattice as the primary
diagnostic of excitations in the lattice. We show that this locally determined
quantity should be a robust indicator of coherence changes in the atoms
observed in recent experiments. This was found to hold for commensurate or
non-commensurate fillings of the lattice, implying our results will hold for a
wide range of physical cases. Our results are in good agreement with the
quantitative factors of recent experiments. We do, howevers, find extra
features in the excitation spectra. The variation of the spectra with the
duration of the perturbation also turns out to be an interesting diagnostic of
atom dynamics.Comment: 6 pages, 7 figures, using Revtex4; changes to version 2: new data and
substantial revision of tex
Creation and detection of a mesoscopic gas in a non-local quantum superposition
We investigate the scattering of a quantum matter wave soliton on a barrier
in a one dimensional geometry and we show that it can lead to mesoscopic
Schr\"odinger cat states, where the atomic gas is in a coherent superposition
of being in the half-space to the left of the barrier and being in the
half-space to the right of the barrier. We propose an interferometric method to
reveal the coherent nature of this superposition and we discuss in details the
experimental feasibility.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figur
Quantum estimation of coupled parameters and the role of entanglement
The quantum Cramer-Rao bound places a limit on the mean square error of a parameter estimation procedure, and its numerical value is determined by the quantum Fisher information. For single parameters, this leads to the well- known Heisenberg limit that surpasses the classical shot-noise limit. When estimating multiple parameters, the situation is more complicated and the quantum Cramer-Rao bound is generally not attainable. In such cases, the use of entanglement typically still offers an enhancement in precision. Here, we demonstrate that entanglement is detrimental when estimating some nuisance parameters. In general, we find that the estimation of coupled parameters does not benefit from either classical or quantum correlations. We illustrate this effect in a practical application for optical gyroscopes
Attaining subclassical metrology in lossy systems with entangled coherent states
Quantum mechanics allows entanglement enhanced measurements to be performed, but loss remains an obstacle in constructing realistic quantum metrology schemes. However, recent work has revealed that entangled coherent states (ECSs) have the potential to perform robust subclassical measurements [J. Joo et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 107, 083601 (2011)]. Up to now no read-out scheme has been devised that exploits this robust nature of ECSs, but we present here an experimentally accessible method of achieving precision close to the theoretical bound, even with loss.We show substantial improvements over unentangled classical states and highly entangled NOON states for a wide range of loss values, elevating quantum metrology to a realizable technology in the near future
Control of the geometric phase and pseudo-spin dynamics on coupled Bose-Einstein condensates
We describe the behavior of two coupled Bose-Einstein condensates in
time-dependent (TD) trap potentials and TD Rabi (or tunneling) frequency, using
the two-mode approach. Starting from Bloch states, we succeed to get analytical
solutions for the TD Schroedinger equation and present a detailed analysis of
the relative and geometric phases acquired by the wave function of the
condensates, as well as their population imbalance. We also establish a
connection between the geometric phases and constants of motion which
characterize the dynamic of the system. Besides analyzing the affects of
temporality on condensates that differs by hyperfine degrees of freedom
(internal Josephson effect), we also do present a brief discussion of a one
specie condensate in a double-well potential
(external Josephson effect).Comment: 1 tex file and 11 figures in pdf forma
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