The quantum mechanical propagator of a massive particle in a linear gravitational potential derived already in 1927 by Kennard [2, 3] contains a phase that scales with the third power of the time T during which the particle experiences the corresponding force. Since in conventional atom interferometers the internal atomic states are all exposed to the same acceleration a, this T 3 -phase cancels out and the interferometer phase scales as T 2 . In contrast, by applying an external magnetic field we prepare two different accelerations a 1 and a 2 for two internal states of the atom, which translate themselves into two different cubic phases and the resulting interferometer phase scales as T 3 . We present the theoretical background for, and summarize our progress towards experimentally realizing such a novel atom interferometer.
CITATION STYLE
Zimmermann, M., Efremov, M. A., Roura, A., Schleich, W. P., DeSavage, S. A., Davis, J. P., … Rasel, E. M. (2018). T 3 -interferometer for atoms. In Exploring the World with the Laser: Dedicated to Theodor Hänsch on his 75th Birthday (pp. 457–489). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64346-5_27
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