A Raman waveplate for spinor Bose–Einstein condensates

Abstract

We demonstrate a waveplate for a pseudo-spin-1/2 Bose-Einstein condensate using a two-photon Raman interaction. The angle of the waveplate is set by the relative phase of the optical fields, and the retardance is controlled by the pulse area. The waveplate allows us to image maps of the Stokes parameters of a BoseEinstein condensate and thereby measure its relative ground state phase. We demonstrate the waveplate by measuring the Stokes parameters of a coreless vortex.

Vectorial light-matter interaction -- exploring spatially structured complex light fields

“…The generation and properties of such vector vortices are the subject of ongoing investigations. [201][202][203][204][205][206][207]…”

SU(2) geometric phase induced by a periodically driven Raman process in ultracold dilute Bose gas

“…In this section we consider strategies for creating the periodic Hamiltonian discussed in the previous section using a Raman process in the ground state manifold of a 87 Rb atom. The Raman process has a variety of applications in the study of ultracold atoms, including quantum state manipulation, generating artificial gauge potentials and spin-orbit coupling, and creating topological defects [24][25][26][27][28][29]. We consider |1 = |F = 1, m F = −1 and |2 = |F = 1, m F = 1 in the 5 2 S 1 2 , F = 1 ground state manifold of 87 Rb to be our pseudo-spin-1/2 system, as shown in Fig.1(a).…”

Raman fingerprints on the Bloch sphere of a spinor Bose–Einstein condensate

“…Similarly, changing the relative frequencies of the Raman waveplate beams also causes the interference pattern to rotate. The original Raman waveplate scheme relied on changing path lengths in an interferometer with a piezo-electric transducer [39]; however, the next generation Raman waveplate could rely on changing the relative frequencies between beams since it is easy to control frequencies with high precision.…”

“…If the initial state is in one of the spin eigenstates, then the evolution of the state is represented by a great circle containing the north and south poles. If the Raman beams are also plane waves, the two-photon interaction serves as a Raman waveplate [39]. The matrix M simplifies to the form of a Jones matrix for an arbitrary waveplate [40,41] written in the right-/left-hand circular basis with retardance Ω 0 t and angle φ/2.…”

“…on the waveplate angle. Therefore, we can use the Raman waveplate not only to generate arbitrary superpositions of the two spin eigenstates but to measure the Stokes parameters of the atomic system [39].…”