Interference of bose-einstein condensates in momentum space

Abstract

We suggest an experiment to investigate interference effects between two spatially separated Bose-Einstein condensates. In the presence of coherence, the dynamic structure factor, measurable through inelastic photon scattering, is predicted to exhibit, at high momentum transfer q, interference fringes with frequency period Δ ν = q/md, where d is the distance between the condensates. We show that this coherent configuration corresponds to an eigenstate of the physical observable measured in the experiment and that the relative phase of the condensates can be, hence, created through the measurement process. © 1999 The American Physical Society.