Thursday, February 5, 2009

Ramsey-Borde Atom Interferometer

A Ramsey-Borde interferometer is a matter wave interferometer which uses a beam of cold atoms/molecules as a matter wave and four traveling waves as beam-splitters. The matter wave is split at first by a laser traveling wave into two wave packets of which 50% of the atoms/molecules remain in the ground state and the other 50% go to the excited state by absorbing a photon from the laser. After a certain time interval, the second laser wave is used to split the two wave packets again. Then two subsequent splittings are made by two waves traveling in an opposite directions to the direction of the previous waves.

Note: This posting is in progress.

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