Marek Trippenbach

Crossover from self-defocusing to discrete trapping in nonlinear waveguide arrays.

We predict a sharp crossover from nonlinear self-defocusing to discrete self-trapping of a narrow Gaussian beam with the increase of the refractive index contrast in a periodic photonic lattice. We demonstrate experimentally nonlinear discrete localization of light with defocusing nonlinearity by single site excitation in LiNbO(3) waveguide arrays.

Cold and trapped metastable noble gases

Experimental work on cold, trapped metastable noble gases is reviewed. The aspects which distinguish work with these atoms from the large body of work on cold, trapped atoms in general is emphasized. These aspects include detection techniques and collision processes unique to metastable atoms. Several experiments exploiting these unique features in fields including atom optics and statistical physics are described. Precision measurements on these atoms including fine structure splittings, isotope shifts, and atomic lifetimes are also discussed.

Spontaneous Four-Wave Mixing of de Broglie Waves: Beyond Optics

We investigate the atom-optical analog of degenerate four-wave mixing by colliding two Bose-Einstein condensates of metastable helium. The momentum distribution of the scattered atoms is measured in three dimensions. A simple analogy with photon phase matching conditions suggests a spherical final distribution. We find, however, that it is an ellipsoid with radii smaller than the initial collision momenta. Numerical and analytical calculations agree with this and reveal the interplay between many-body effects, mean-field interaction, and the anisotropy of the source condensate.

Spontaneous symmetry breaking of gap solitons and phase transitions in double-well traps

We introduce a two dimensional model for the Bose-Einstein condensate with both attractive and repulsive nonlinearities. We assume a combination of a double well potential in one direction, and an optical lattice along the perpendicular coordinate. We look for dual core solitons in this model, focusing on their symmetry-breaking bifurcations. The analysis employs a variational approximation, which is verified by numerical results. The bifurcation which transforms antisymmetric gap solitons into asymmetric ones is of supercritical type in the case of repulsion; in the attraction model, increase of the optical latttice strength leads to a gradual transition from subcritical bifurcation (for symmetric solitons) to a supercritical one.

Oscillating Solitons in a Three-Component Bose-Einstein Condensate

We investigate the properties of three component BEC systems with spin exchange interactions. We consider different coupling constants from those very special ones leading to exact solutions known in the literature. When two solitons collide, a spin component oscillation of the two emerging entities is observed. This behavior seems to be generic. A mathematical model is derived for the emerging solitons. It describes the new oscillatory phenomenon extremely well. Surprisingly, the model is in fact an exact solution to the initial equations. This comes as a bonus.

Parameter estimation in memory-assisted noisy quantum interferometry

We demonstrate that memory in an

Critical fluctuations of an attractive Bose gas in a double-well potential

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Statics and dynamics of Bose-Einstein condensates in double square well potentials

-qubit system subjected to decoherence, is a potential resource for the slow-down of the entanglement decay. We show that this effect can be used to retain the sub shot-noise sensitivity of the parameter estimation in quantum interferometry. We calculate quantum Fisher information, which sets the ultimate bound for the precision of the estimation. We also derive the sensitivity of such a noisy interferometer, when the phase is either estimated from the measurements of the population imbalance or from the one-body density.

Spectroscopy of cross-correlations of environmental noises with two qubits

We consider a Bose gas with an attractive interaction in a symmetric double-well potential. In the mean-field approximation, the ground-state solution spontaneously breaks the symmetry of the trapping potential above a certain value of the interaction strength. We demonstrate how the Landau-Ginzburg scheme of the second-order phase transition emerges from the quantum model and show the link to the spontaneous symmetry breaking mentioned above. We identify the order parameter, the critical point and analyze quantum fluctuations around it.

Self-consistent treatment of the full vectorial nonlinear optical pulse propagation equation in an isotropic medium

We treat the behavior of Bose-Einstein condensates in double square well potentials of both equal and different depths. For even depth, symmetry preserving solutions to the relevant nonlinear Schrödinger equation are known, just as in the linear limit. When the nonlinearity is strong enough, symmetry breaking solutions also exist, side by side with the symmetric one. Interestingly, solutions almost entirely localized in one of the wells are known as an extreme case. Here we outline a method for obtaining all these solutions for repulsive interactions. The bifurcation point at which, for critical nonlinearity, the asymmetric solutions branch off from the symmetry preserving ones is found analytically. We also find this bifurcation point and treat the solutions generally via a Josephson junction model. When the confining potential is in the form of two wells of different depth, interesting phenomena appear. This is true of both the occurrence of the bifurcation point for the static solutions and also of the dynamics of phase and amplitude varying solutions. Again a generalization of the Josephson model proves useful. The stability of solutions is treated briefly.