Loschmidt cooling by time reversal of atomic matter waves

John Martin (1, 2) , Bertrand Georgeot (1, 2) , Dima Shepelyansky (1)

1 ICQ - Cohérence Quantique (LPT)
2 LPT - Laboratoire de Physique Théorique

We propose an experimental scheme which allows to realize approximate time reversal of matter waves of ultracold atoms in the regime of quantum chaos. We show that a significant fraction of the atoms return back to their original state, being at the same time cooled down by two orders of magnitude. We give a theoretical description of this effect supported by extensive numerical simulations. The proposed scheme can be implemented with existing experimental setups.

Domaines: Mécanique statistique [cond-mat.stat-mech]

John Martin, Bertrand Georgeot, Dima Shepelyansky. Loschmidt cooling by time reversal of atomic matter waves. Physical Review Letters, 2008, 100, pp.044106. ⟨10.1103/PhysRevLett.100.044106⟩. ⟨hal-00182534⟩