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arXiv · 1811.06731

Transverse Confinement of Photon Position in Light-Atom Interaction

Jun Sun·Yong-Nan Sun
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Abstract

In light-pulsed atom interferometry, the phase accumulated by atoms depends on the effective wave vector of the absorbed photons. In this work, we proposed a theory model to analyses the effective wave vector of photons in structured light. As for monochromatic optical field, a transverse confinement could lead to diffraction. We put forward that in light-atom interaction, the atom wave function could also provide a transverse confinement thus affect the effective wave vector of the absorbed photons. We calculated the relative shift of the photon effective wave vector when an atom with a Gaussian wave function absorbs one photon at the waist in a Gaussian beam. This shift could lead to a systematic effect related to atom spatial distribution in high precision experiment based on light-pulsed atom interferometry.

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Jun Sun, Yong-Nan Sun. 2018-11-16. Transverse Confinement of Photon Position in Light-Atom Interaction. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.126.213603

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