Abstract
We demonstrate atomic four-wave mixing of two-component matter waves in a collinear geometry. Starting from a single-species Bose–Einstein condensate, seed and pump modes are prepared through microwave state transfer and state-selective Kapitza–Dirac diffraction. Four-wave mixing then populates the initially empty output modes. Simulations based on a coupled-mode expansion of the Gross–Pitaevskii equation are in very good agreement with the experimental data. We show that four-wave mixing can play an important role in studies of bosonic mixtures in optical lattices. Moreover, our system should be of interest in the context of quantum atom optics.
- Received 10 December 2009
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.104.200402
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