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APS » Journals » Phys. Rev. Lett. » Volume 94 » Issue 17
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Phys. Rev. Lett. 94, 170403 (2005) [4 pages]

Photon Recoil Momentum in Dispersive Media

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Gretchen K. Campbell, Aaron E. Leanhardt*, Jongchul Mun, Micah Boyd, Erik W. Streed, Wolfgang Ketterle, and David E. Pritchard†
MIT-Harvard Center for Ultracold Atoms, Research Laboratory of Electronics and Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA

Received 31 January 2005; published 4 May 2005

A systematic shift of the photon recoil momentum due to the index of refraction of a dilute gas of atoms has been observed. The recoil frequency was determined with a two-pulse light grating interferometer using near-resonant laser light. The results show that the recoil momentum of atoms caused by the absorption of a photon is nℏk, where n is the index of refraction of the gas and k is the vacuum wave vector of the photon. This systematic effect must be accounted for in high-precision atom interferometry with light gratings.

© 2005 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.94.170403
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevLett.94.170403
PACS:
03.75.Dg, 39.20.+q, 42.50.Ct

*Present address: JILA, Boulder, CO 80309, USA.

†Electronic address: http://cua.mit.edu/ketterle_group/

 
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