Condensate splitting in an asymmetric double well for atom chip based sensors

We report on the adiabatic splitting of a Bose-Einstein condensate of 87Rb atoms by an asymmetric double-well potential located above the edge of a perpendicularly magnetized TbGdFeCo film atom chip. By controlling the barrier height and double-well asymmetry, the sensitivity of the axial splitting...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Physical review letters 2007-01, Vol.98 (3), p.030402-030402, Article 030402
Main Authors: Hall, B V, Whitlock, S, Anderson, R, Hannaford, P, Sidorov, A I
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
ASYMMETRY
ATOMS
BOSE-EINSTEIN CONDENSATION
CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSICS
GRAVITATION
POTENTIALS
RUBIDIUM 87
SENSITIVITY
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Summary:We report on the adiabatic splitting of a Bose-Einstein condensate of 87Rb atoms by an asymmetric double-well potential located above the edge of a perpendicularly magnetized TbGdFeCo film atom chip. By controlling the barrier height and double-well asymmetry, the sensitivity of the axial splitting process is investigated through observation of the fractional atom distribution between the left and right wells. This process constitutes a novel sensor for which we infer a single shot sensitivity to gravity fields of deltag/g approximately 2 x 10(-4). From a simple analytic model, we propose improvements to chip-based gravity detectors using this demonstrated methodology.
ISSN:0031-9007
1079-7114
DOI:10.1103/PhysRevLett.98.030402