Abstract
We investigate the spatially dependent relative phase evolution of an elongated two-component Bose-Einstein condensate. The pseudospin- system is comprised of the and hyperfine ground states of , which we magnetically trap and interrogate with radio-frequency and microwave fields. We probe the relative phase evolution with Ramsey interferometry and observe a temporal decay of the interferometric contrast well described by a mean-field formalism. Inhomogeneity of the collective relative phase dominates the loss of interferometric contrast, rather than decoherence or phase diffusion. We demonstrate a technique to simultaneously image each state, yielding subpercent variations in the measured relative number while preserving the spatial mode of each component. In addition, we propose a spatially sensitive interferometric technique to image the relative phase.
- Received 30 April 2009
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.80.023603
©2009 American Physical Society