Manning A G, Khakimov R, Dall R G, Truscott A G
Research School of Physics and Engineering, Australian National University, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory 0200, Australia.
Phys Rev Lett. 2014 Sep 26;113(13):130403. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.113.130403. Epub 2014 Sep 24.
An important aspect of the rapidly growing field of quantum atom optics is exploring the behavior of ultracold atoms at a deeper level than the mean field approximation, where the quantum properties of individual atoms becomes important. Major recent advances have been achieved with the creation and detection of reliable single-atom sources, which is a crucial tool for testing fundamental quantum processes. Here, we create a source comprised of a single ultracold metastable helium atom, which enables novel free-space quantum atom optics experiments to be performed with single massive particles with large de Broglie wavelengths.
量子原子光学这一快速发展领域的一个重要方面是，在比平均场近似更深的层面上探索超冷原子的行为，在平均场近似中单个原子的量子特性变得重要起来。近期利用可靠单原子源的产生和探测取得了重大进展，单原子源是测试基本量子过程的关键工具。在此，我们创建了一个由单个超冷亚稳态氦原子组成的源，这使得能够利用具有大德布罗意波长的单个大质量粒子进行新颖的自由空间量子原子光学实验。
