Creation and detection of a mesoscopic gas in a non-local quantum superposition

Christoph Weiss (1) , Yvan Castin (1)

1 LKB (Lhomond) - Laboratoire Kastler Brossel

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 Schrödinger cat 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 details the experimental feasibility.

Domaines: Autre [cond-mat.other]

Christoph Weiss, Yvan Castin. Creation and detection of a mesoscopic gas in a non-local quantum superposition. Physical Review Letters, 2009, 102, pp.010403. ⟨hal-00289431⟩