Coherence in the presence of absorption and heating in a molecule interferometer

Matter-wave interferometry can be used to probe the foundations of physics and to enable precise measurements of particle properties and fundamental constants. It relies on beam splitters that coherently divide the wave function. In atom interferometers, such elements are often realised using lasers...

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Main Authors:	Cotter, J. P., Eibenberger, S., Mairhofer, L., Cheng, X., Asenbaum, P., Arndt, M., Walter, K., Nimmrichter, S., Hornberger, K.
Format:	Online
Language:	English
Published:	Nature Pub. Group 2015
Online Access:	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4477035/

id	pubmed-4477035
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	pubmed-44770352015-07-13 Coherence in the presence of absorption and heating in a molecule interferometer Cotter, J. P. Eibenberger, S. Mairhofer, L. Cheng, X. Asenbaum, P. Arndt, M. Walter, K. Nimmrichter, S. Hornberger, K. Article Matter-wave interferometry can be used to probe the foundations of physics and to enable precise measurements of particle properties and fundamental constants. It relies on beam splitters that coherently divide the wave function. In atom interferometers, such elements are often realised using lasers by exploiting the dipole interaction or through photon absorption. It is intriguing to extend these ideas to complex molecules where the energy of an absorbed photon can rapidly be redistributed across many internal degrees of freedom. Here, we provide evidence that center-of-mass coherence can be maintained even when the internal energy and entropy of the interfering particle are substantially increased by absorption of photons from a standing light wave. Each photon correlates the molecular center-of-mass wave function with its internal temperature and splits it into a superposition with opposite momenta in addition to the beam-splitting action of the optical dipole potential. Nature Pub. Group 2015-06-11 /pmc/articles/PMC4477035/ /pubmed/26066053 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ncomms8336 Text en Copyright © 2015, Nature Publishing Group, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited. All Rights Reserved. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
repository_type	Open Access Journal
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	US National Center for Biotechnology Information
building	NCBI PubMed
collection	Online Access
language	English
format	Online
author	Cotter, J. P. Eibenberger, S. Mairhofer, L. Cheng, X. Asenbaum, P. Arndt, M. Walter, K. Nimmrichter, S. Hornberger, K.
spellingShingle	Cotter, J. P. Eibenberger, S. Mairhofer, L. Cheng, X. Asenbaum, P. Arndt, M. Walter, K. Nimmrichter, S. Hornberger, K. Coherence in the presence of absorption and heating in a molecule interferometer
author_facet	Cotter, J. P. Eibenberger, S. Mairhofer, L. Cheng, X. Asenbaum, P. Arndt, M. Walter, K. Nimmrichter, S. Hornberger, K.
author_sort	Cotter, J. P.
title	Coherence in the presence of absorption and heating in a molecule interferometer
title_short	Coherence in the presence of absorption and heating in a molecule interferometer
title_full	Coherence in the presence of absorption and heating in a molecule interferometer
title_fullStr	Coherence in the presence of absorption and heating in a molecule interferometer
title_full_unstemmed	Coherence in the presence of absorption and heating in a molecule interferometer
title_sort	coherence in the presence of absorption and heating in a molecule interferometer
description	Matter-wave interferometry can be used to probe the foundations of physics and to enable precise measurements of particle properties and fundamental constants. It relies on beam splitters that coherently divide the wave function. In atom interferometers, such elements are often realised using lasers by exploiting the dipole interaction or through photon absorption. It is intriguing to extend these ideas to complex molecules where the energy of an absorbed photon can rapidly be redistributed across many internal degrees of freedom. Here, we provide evidence that center-of-mass coherence can be maintained even when the internal energy and entropy of the interfering particle are substantially increased by absorption of photons from a standing light wave. Each photon correlates the molecular center-of-mass wave function with its internal temperature and splits it into a superposition with opposite momenta in addition to the beam-splitting action of the optical dipole potential.
publisher	Nature Pub. Group
publishDate	2015
url	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4477035/
_version_	1613238931928645632

Coherence in the presence of absorption and heating in a molecule interferometer

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