Thursday, February 26, 2009

BEC in a triple well potential

This is a review of a paper by Rab et. al.

Consider a triple well potential with the wells 'L' , 'M' and 'R' for the left, middle and right wells respectively. A BEC sitting in the 'L' well can be transported to the 'R' well so that no atoms are left in the 'M' well. The researchers call this process as macroscopic matter-wave Transport Without Transit (TWT) and this can be done by Stimulated Raman Adiabatic Passage(STIRAP). In STIRAP, is a technique to transfer population between two atomic states - 1 and 3 via an intermediate excited state 2. The atomic population is adiabatically transferred from the state 1 to state 3 by coupling the states 1 to 2 and and 2 to 3 using electromagnetic pulses. The population transfer is achieved via a superposition of the states 1 and 3 with the occupation of the state 2 strongly suppressed. That's why is is called the TWT.

Note: This post is in progress.

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