Optical detection of fractional particle number in an atomic Fermi-Dirac gas.
We study theoretically a Fermi-Dirac atomic gas in a one-dimensional optical lattice coupled to a coherent electromagnetic field with a topologically nontrivial soliton phase profile. We argue that the resulting fractional eigenvalues of the particle number operator can be detected via light scattering. This could be a truly quantum mechanical measurement of particle number fractionalization in a dilute atomic gas.
Javanainen
Juha
J
Department of Physics, University of Connecticut, Storrs, Connecticut 06269-3046, USA.
Ruostekoski
Janne
J