title: Creation and detection of a mesoscopic gas in a nonlocal quantum superposition.
abstract: We investigate the scattering of a quantum matter wave soliton on a barrier in a one-dimensional geometry, and we show that it can lead to mesoscopic quantum superposition states, where the atomic gas is in a coherent superposition of being in the half-space to the left of the barrier and being in the half-space to the right of the barrier. We propose an interferometric method to reveal the coherent nature of this superposition, and we discuss in detail the experimental feasibility.
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire Kastler Brossel, Ecole Normale Supérieure, UPMC and CNRS, 24 rue Lhomond, 75231 Paris Cedex 05, France.
authors.forename: Christoph
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Weiss
authors.forename: Yvan
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Castin