Splitting a Bose gas into two parts: Josephson physics, entanglement and interferometry
Prof. Dr. Markus Oberthaler (Universität Heidelberg)

<p> The realization of atomic Bose-Einstein condensates opens up the way to observe fundamental quantum mechanical effects on a macroscopic scale. Fortunately the situation is far from being an ideal gas realization and the interactions between particles play a crucial role and lead to new phenomena [1].
Splitting a degenerate Bose gas into two parts naturally is connected to a paradigm quantum effect namely tunnelling of macroscopic quantum states through a barrier. Beside the explicit observation of tunnelling dynamics the experiments also allow for the generation of interesting many particle quantum states i.e. spin squeezed states. The generation as well as the application for improvement of atom interferometry surpassing the classical precision limit will be discussed in detail. <p>

<p> [1] Nobel laureate Eric Cornell pointed out: “The overall picture [of BEC theory of an ideal gas] is sufficiently easy to understand that, if the system truly were an ideal gas, there would be little left to study at this point” <p>