Abstract
In recent years, substantial progress has been made in exploringand exploiting the analogy between classical light and matter waves for fundamental investigations and applications1. Extending this analogy to quantum matter-wave optics is promoted by the nonlinearities intrinsic to interacting particles and is a stepping stone towards non-classical states2,3. In light optics, twin-photon beams4 are a key element for generating the non-local correlations and entanglement required for applications such as precision metrology and quantum communication5. Similar sources for massive particles have so far been limited by the multi-mode character of the processes involved or a predominant background signal6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13. Here we present highly efficient emission of twin-atom beams into a single transversal mode of a waveguide potential. The source is a one-dimensional degenerate Bose gas14 in the first radially excited state. We directly measure a suppression of fluctuations in the atom number difference between the beams to 0.37(3) with respect to the classical expectation, equivalent to 0.11(2) after correcting for detection noise. Our results underline the potential of ultracold atomic gases as sources for quantum matter-wave optics and should enable the implementation of schemes previously unattainable with massive particles5,15,16,17,18,19.
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Acknowledgements
We acknowledge support from the FWF projects P21080-N16 and I607, the EU projects AQUTE, QuDeGPM and Marie Curie (FP7 GA no. 236702), the FWF doctoral programme CoQuS (W 1210), the FunMat and NAWI GASS research alliances, the City of Vienna and Siemens Austria. We wish to thank E. Altman, A. Gottlieb, B. Hessmo, K. Kheruntsyan, I. Mazets, M. Oberthaler, H. Ritsch and G. von Winckel for stimulating discussions.
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R.B., S.M. and T. Berrada collected the data presented in this letter. J.G. and U.H. provided the OCT calculations for the excitation sequence. All authors contributed to analysis and interpretation of the data and helped in editing the manuscript.
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Bücker, R., Grond, J., Manz, S. et al. Twin-atom beams. Nature Phys 7, 608–611 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys1992
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys1992
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