Impulsively Excited Gravitational Quantum States: Echoes and Time-Resolved Spectroscopy

We theoretically study an impulsively excited quantum bouncer (QB)-a particle bouncing off a surface in the presence of gravity. A pair of time-delayed pulsed excitations is shown to induce a wave-packet echo effect-a partial rephasing of the QB wave function appearing at twice the delay between pul...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inPhysical review letters Vol. 126; no. 17; p. 170403
Main Authors Tutunnikov, I, Rajitha, K V, Voronin, A Yu, Nesvizhevsky, V V, Averbukh, I Sh
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States 30.04.2021
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Summary:We theoretically study an impulsively excited quantum bouncer (QB)-a particle bouncing off a surface in the presence of gravity. A pair of time-delayed pulsed excitations is shown to induce a wave-packet echo effect-a partial rephasing of the QB wave function appearing at twice the delay between pulses. In addition, an appropriately chosen observable [here, the population of the ground gravitational quantum state (GQS)] recorded as a function of the delay is shown to contain the transition frequencies between the GQSs, their populations, and partial phase information about the wave-packet quantum amplitudes. The wave-packet echo effect is a promising candidate method for precision studies of GQSs of ultracold neutrons, atoms, and antiatoms confined in closed gravitational traps.
ISSN:1079-7114
DOI:10.1103/PhysRevLett.126.170403