TY - JOUR

T1 - Universal atom interferometer simulation of elastic scattering processes

AU - Fitzek, Florian

AU - Siemß, Jan Niclas

AU - Seckmeyer, Stefan

AU - Ahlers, Holger

AU - Rasel, Ernst M.

AU - Hammerer, Klemens

AU - Gaaloul, Naceur

N1 - Funding Information: We thank Sven Abend, Sina Loriani, Christian Schubert for insightful discussions and Eric Charron for carefully reading the manuscript. N.G. wishes to thank Alexander D. Cronin for fruitful indications about previous publications related to our current work. We also thank Matthew Glaysher and Heather Glaysher for proofreading the manuscript. This work was funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation) under Germany’s Excellence Strategy (EXC-2123 QuantumFrontiers Grants No. 390837967) and through CRC 1227 (DQ-mat) within Projects No. A05 and No. B07, the Verein Deutscher Ingenieure (VDI) with funds provided by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) under Grant No. VDI 13N14838 (TAIOL). We furthermore acknowledge financial support from “Niedersächsisches Vorab” through “Förderung von Wissenschaft und Technik in Forschung und Lehre” for the initial funding of research in the new DLR-SI Institute and the “Quantum-and Nano Metrology (QUANOMET)” initiative within the project QT3. Further support was possible by the German Space Agency (DLR) with funds provided by the Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi) due to an enactment of the German Bundestag under grant No. 50WM1861 (CAL) and 50WM2060 (CARIOQA).

PY - 2020/12/17

Y1 - 2020/12/17

N2 - In this article, we introduce a universal simulation framework covering all regimes of matter-wave light-pulse elastic scattering. Applied to atom interferometry as a study case, this simulator solves the atom-light diffraction problem in the elastic case, i.e., when the internal state of the atoms remains unchanged. Taking this perspective, the light-pulse beam splitting is interpreted as a space and time-dependent external potential. In a shift from the usual approach based on a system of momentum-space ordinary differential equations, our position-space treatment is flexible and scales favourably for realistic cases where the light fields have an arbitrary complex spatial behaviour rather than being mere plane waves. Moreover, the solver architecture we developed is effortlessly extended to the problem class of trapped and interacting geometries, which has no simple formulation in the usual framework of momentum-space ordinary differential equations. We check the validity of our model by revisiting several case studies relevant to the precision atom interferometry community. We retrieve analytical solutions when they exist and extend the analysis to more complex parameter ranges in a cross-regime fashion. The flexibility of the approach, the insight it gives, its numerical scalability and accuracy make it an exquisite tool to design, understand and quantitatively analyse metrology-oriented matter-wave interferometry experiments.

AB - In this article, we introduce a universal simulation framework covering all regimes of matter-wave light-pulse elastic scattering. Applied to atom interferometry as a study case, this simulator solves the atom-light diffraction problem in the elastic case, i.e., when the internal state of the atoms remains unchanged. Taking this perspective, the light-pulse beam splitting is interpreted as a space and time-dependent external potential. In a shift from the usual approach based on a system of momentum-space ordinary differential equations, our position-space treatment is flexible and scales favourably for realistic cases where the light fields have an arbitrary complex spatial behaviour rather than being mere plane waves. Moreover, the solver architecture we developed is effortlessly extended to the problem class of trapped and interacting geometries, which has no simple formulation in the usual framework of momentum-space ordinary differential equations. We check the validity of our model by revisiting several case studies relevant to the precision atom interferometry community. We retrieve analytical solutions when they exist and extend the analysis to more complex parameter ranges in a cross-regime fashion. The flexibility of the approach, the insight it gives, its numerical scalability and accuracy make it an exquisite tool to design, understand and quantitatively analyse metrology-oriented matter-wave interferometry experiments.

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85097665300&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1038/s41598-020-78859-1

DO - 10.1038/s41598-020-78859-1

M3 - Article

C2 - 33335161

AN - SCOPUS:85097665300

VL - 10

JO - Scientific Reports

JF - Scientific Reports

SN - 2045-2322

IS - 1

M1 - 22120

ER -