PHYSICAL REVIEW A 93, 023641 (2016)
Atomic multiwave interferometer for Aharonov-Casher-phase measurements
Min-Kang Zhou, Ke Zhang, Xiao-Chun Duan, Yi Ke, Cheng-Gang Shao, and Zhong-Kun Hu *
MOE Key Laboratory of Fundamental Physical Quantities Measurement, School of Physics, Huazhong University of Science and Technology,
1037 Luo Yu Road, Wuhan 430074, People’s Republic of China
(Received 3 August 2015; published 24 February 2016)
We present an atomic multiwave interferometer with magnetic sublevels to precisely determine the Aharonov-Casher (AC) geometric phase. Simulations show that this interferometer has sharper fringes than a normal two-wave interferometer, which means a higher phase resolution can be achieved. Moreover, atoms evolving in a single hyperfine structure state make the interferometer insensitive to the dc Stark phase shift. This dc Stark shift is one of the main noise sources in AC phase measurements. The constraint of the photon rest mass is also discussed when using this atomic interferometer to measure the Aharonov-Casher phase.
