Soliton interferometry with very narrow barriers obtained from spatially dependent dressed states

Abstract

Bright solitons in atomic Bose--Einstein condensates are strong candidates for high precision matter-wave interferometry, as their inherent stability against dispersion supports long interrogation times. An analog to a beam splitter is then a narrow potential barrier. A very narrow barrier is desirable for interferometric purposes, but in a typical realisation using a blue-detuned optical dipole potential, the width is limited by the laser wavelength. We investigate a soliton interferometry scheme using the geometric scalar potential experienced by atoms in a spatially dependent dark state to overcome this limit. We propose a possible implementation and numerically probe the effects of deviations from the ideal configuration.