Quantum matter wave dynamics with moving mirrors

Abstract

When a stationary reflecting wall acting as a perfect mirror for an atomic beam with well defined incident velocity is suddenly removed, the density profile develops during the time evolution an oscillatory pattern known as diffraction in time. The interference fringes are suppressed or their visibility is diminished by several effects such as averaging over a distribution of incident velocities, apodization of the aperture function, atom-atom interactions, imperfect reflection or environmental noise. However, when the mirror moves with finite velocity along the direction of propagation of the beam, the visibility of the fringes is enhanced. For mirror velocities below beam velocity, as used for slowing down the beam, the matter wave splits into three regions separated by space-time points with classical analogues. For mirror velocities above beam velocity a visibility enhancement occurs without a classical counterpart. When the velocity of the beam approaches that of the mirror the density oscillations rise by a factor 1.8 over the stationary value.