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American Physical Society, Physical Review Letters, 16(117)

DOI: 10.1103/physrevlett.117.163003

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Competition between Spin Echo and Spin Self-Rephasing in a Trapped Atom Interferometer

This paper is available in a repository.
This paper is available in a repository.

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Data provided by SHERPA/RoMEO

Abstract

We perform Ramsey interferometry on an ultracold 87Rb ensemble confined in an optical dipoletrap. We use a π-pulse set at the middle of the interferometer to restore the coherence of the spinensemble by canceling out phase inhomogeneities and creating a spin echo in the contrast. However,for high atomic densities, we observe the opposite behavior: the π-pulse accelerates the dephasingof the spin ensemble leading to a faster contrast decay of the interferometer. We understand thisphenomenon as a competition between the spin-echo technique and an exchange-interaction drivenspin self-rephasing mechanism based on the identical spin rotation effect. Our experimental data iswell reproduced by a numerical model.