Tue March 21, 2006 4:00 pm
Classical and Quantum Optical Approaches to Four-wave-mixing of Matter Waves in Periodic Potentials
Location:Jefferson-356
Klaus Moelmer, University of Aarhus
Within a project on broad-spectrum generation in photonic crystal fibres, we have recently identified means to tailor the dispersion relation to make optical four-wave mixing a favourable process and to obtain high output light power at selected phase matched frequency components. We have transferred this idea to atomic matter waves, and in the talk I will show how an applied periodic potential provides the dispersion properties needed to resonantly break a moving condensate into two selected momentum classes. This prediction has recently been confirmed experimentally at MIT. We shall show Gross-Pitaevskii mean-field results and unpublished analyses based on a Gutzwiller number state description of the atomic state in each potential well.