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Phys. Rev. A 73, 043602 (2006) [4 pages]

Cavity QED detection of interfering matter waves

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T. Bourdel, T. Donner, S. Ritter, A. Öttl, M. Köhl*, and T. Esslinger
Institute of Quantum Electronics, ETH Zürich, CH-8093 Zürich, Switzerland

Received 26 January 2006; published 5 April 2006

We observe the build-up of a matter wave interference pattern from single atom detection events in a double-slit experiment. The interference arises from two overlapping atom laser beams extracted from a rubidium Bose-Einstein condensate. Our detector is a high-finesse optical cavity which realizes a quantum measurement of the presence of an atom and thereby projects delocalized atoms into a state with zero or one atom in the resonator. The experiment reveals simultaneously the granular and the wave nature of matter. We present a setup which is suited for applications in atom interferometry and cavity QED.

© 2006 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevA.73.043602
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevA.73.043602
PACS:
03.75.Dg, 03.75.Pp, 05.30.Jp, 42.50.Pq

*Electronic address: Koehl@phys.ethz.ch