title: Condensate splitting in an asymmetric double well for atom chip based sensors.
abstract: We report on the adiabatic splitting of a Bose-Einstein condensate of 87Rb atoms by an asymmetric double-well potential located above the edge of a perpendicularly magnetized TbGdFeCo film atom chip. By controlling the barrier height and double-well asymmetry, the sensitivity of the axial splitting process is investigated through observation of the fractional atom distribution between the left and right wells. This process constitutes a novel sensor for which we infer a single shot sensitivity to gravity fields of deltag/g approximately 2 x 10(-4). From a simple analytic model, we propose improvements to chip-based gravity detectors using this demonstrated methodology.
authors.affiliation: ARC Centre of Excellence for Quantum-Atom Optics and Centre for Atom Optics and Ultrafast Spectroscopy, Swinburne University of Technology, Hawthorn, Victoria 3122, Australia. brhall@swin.edu.au
authors.forename: B V
authors.initials: BV
authors.lastname: Hall
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Whitlock
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Anderson
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Hannaford
authors.forename: A I
authors.initials: AI
authors.lastname: Sidorov