Collinear four-wave mixing of two-component matter waves.
We demonstrate atomic four-wave mixing of two-component matter waves in a collinear geometry. Starting from a single-species Bose-Einstein condensate, seed and pump modes are prepared through microwave state transfer and state-selective Kapitza-Dirac diffraction. Four-wave mixing then populates the initially empty output modes. Simulations based on a coupled-mode expansion of the Gross-Pitaevskii equation are in very good agreement with the experimental data. We show that four-wave mixing can play an important role in studies of bosonic mixtures in optical lattices. Moreover, our system should be of interest in the context of quantum atom optics.
Pertot
Daniel
D
Department of Physics and Astronomy, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, New York 11794-3800, USA. dpertot@ic.sunysb.edu
Gadway
Bryce
B
Schneble
Dominik
D