Tutunnikov I, Rajitha KV, Voronin AY, Nesvizhevsky VV, Averbukh IS. Impulsively Excited Gravitational Quantum States: Echoes and Time-Resolved Spectroscopy.
Phys Rev Lett 2021;
126:170403. [PMID:
33988422 DOI:
10.1103/physrevlett.126.170403]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/26/2020] [Revised: 12/18/2020] [Accepted: 03/29/2021] [Indexed: 06/12/2023]
Abstract
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.
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