Authors: M Mei M Weitz
Publish Date: 2014/04/27
Volume: 72, Issue: 1, Pages: 91-99
Abstract
We study the effect of photon scattering from a path of a fourbeam atomic interference setup which is based on a cesium atomic beam and two subsequent optical Ramsey pulses projecting the atoms onto a multilevel dark state While in twobeam interference any attempt to keep track of an interfering path reduces the fringe contrast we demonstrate that photon scattering in a multiplepath arrangement cannot only lead to a decrease but under certain conditions also to an increase of the interference contrast The results are confirmed by a densitymatrix calculation We are aware that in all cases the “whichpath” information carried away by the scattered photons leads to a loss of information that is contained in the atomic quantum state An approach to quantify this “whichpath” information using observed fringe signals is presented it allows for an appropriate measure of quantum decoherence in multiplepath interference
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