EGAS41 - Swansea University

41 st EGAS PL 8 Gdańsk 2009
Playing quantum marbles, or how often do atoms interfere with
themselves
Dieter Meschede
Institut fuer Angewandte Physik, Wegelerstr. 8, D-53115 Bonn, Germany
E-mail: meschede@uni-bonn.de
Quantum gases confined by an optical lattices have recently received much attention as
simulators for quantum many-particle systems, and they are advertised as important tools
for quantum information science. In an alternative ”bottom-up” approach small interacting
quantum systems can be created with neutral atoms which resembles a bit children
playing with microscopic marbles. In this lecture I will present our recent experimental
advances where we have taken atomic marbles to the full quantum regime, i.e. to the
observation of atomic matter wave interferences at the single atom level. For instance, we
have realized the quantum analogue of Brownian motion, the quantum walk, a concept
of relevance in quantum information science. New methods to cool single atoms to the
motional ground state also open the potential for the creation of degenerate quantum
states at the level of few atoms only.
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