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Collective emission of matter-wave jets from driven Bose–Einstein condensates

Nature volume 551, pages 356–359 (2017)Cite this article

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Abstract

Scattering is used to probe matter and its interactions in all areas of physics. In ultracold atomic gases, control over pairwise interactions enables us to investigate scattering in quantum many-body systems1. Previous experiments on colliding Bose–Einstein condensates have revealed matter–wave interference2,3, haloes of scattered atoms4,5, four-wave mixing6,7 and correlations between counter-propagating pairs8,9,10. However, a regime with strong stimulation of spontaneous collisions11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20 analogous to superradiance21,22,23 has proved elusive. In this regime, the collisions rapidly produce highly correlated states with macroscopic population. Here we find that runaway stimulated collisions in Bose–Einstein condensates with periodically modulated interaction strength cause the collective emission of matter-wave jets that resemble fireworks. Jets appear only above a threshold modulation amplitude and their correlations are invariant even when the number of ejected atoms grows exponentially. Hence, we show that the structures and atom occupancies of the jets stem from the quantum fluctuations of the condensate. Our findings demonstrate the conditions required for runaway stimulated collisions and reveal the quantum nature of matter-wave emission.

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Figure 1: Two-dimensional emission of matter-wave jets from Bose–Einstein condensates with modulated interactions.
Figure 2: Threshold for jet formation.
Figure 3: Correlations of emitted jets.
Figure 4: Angular width of the jets.

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Acknowledgements

We thank E. Berg for discussions. L.W.C. is supported by the Grainger graduate fellowship. A.G. acknowledges support from a MRSEC-funded Kadanoff-Rice fellowship. This work is supported by the University of Chicago Materials Research Science and Engineering Center, which is funded by the National Science Foundation (DMR-1420709), NSF grant PHY-1511696, and the Army Research Office-Multidisciplinary Research Initiative under grant W911NF-14-1-0003.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Enrico Fermi Institute and Department of Physics, James Franck Institute, University of Chicago, Chicago, 60637, Illinois, USA

    Logan W. Clark, Anita Gaj, Lei Feng & Cheng Chin

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  1. Logan W. Clark
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  2. Anita Gaj
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  3. Lei Feng
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  4. Cheng Chin
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Contributions

All authors contributed extensively to the work presented in this paper. L.W.C. and A.G. conceived and performed the experiments. L.W.C. analysed the data and developed the theory. L.W.C. and A.G. wrote the manuscript. L.F. contributed insights and discussions on the experiment and manuscript. C.C. supervised the project.

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Correspondence to Cheng Chin.

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Clark, L., Gaj, A., Feng, L. et al. Collective emission of matter-wave jets from driven Bose–Einstein condensates. Nature 551, 356–359 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature24272

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