PHYSICAL REVIEW

LETTERS
VOLUME 72 3 JANUARY 1994 NUMBER 1

Atomic Stern-Gerlach Interferences with Time-Dependent Magnetic Fields

S. Nic Chormaic,* Ch. Miniatura, O. Gorceix, B. Viaris de Lesegno, J. Robert, S. Feron, V. Lorent,
J. Reinhardt, J. Baudon, and K. Rubin*
Laboratoire de Physique des Lasers, Universite Paris-Nord, Av. J. B. Clement, 93430-Villetaneuse, France
(Received 27 September 1993)
In atomic Stern-Gerlach (polarization) interferometry with time-dependent magneticfieldsboth the
spatial and temporal parts of the atomic phase are generally affected. This leads to a total energy shift
and to an inelastic momentum transfer. Some of the related effects are studied using a beam of metasta-
ble hydrogen atoms. In particular the scalar Aharonov-Bohm effect and its nondispersivity are con-
sidered, in addition to other phase shift effects occurring where thefieldgradient differs from zero.

PACS numbers: 03.75.Dg, 03.65.Bz

The Stern-Gerlach—or polarization—interferometric
method has proven to be a simple and versatile tool to in-
vestigate momentum distributions, coherence [1], and
quantum phase properties of beams of neutral particles
with nonzero spin such as neutrons [2,3] and atoms [4].
For atoms, only time-independent magnetic fields have
been used so far. In such experiments, the total energy is
conserved, which means that the phase shifts accumulat-
ed by the different Zeeman states (labeled by M) essen-
tially deal with the spatial part of the phase. As a conse-
quence, the interference phenomenon involves elements of
the density matrix in momentum space with momenta of
equal magnitude (elastic scattering by the magnetic po-
tentials). In this respect, longitudinal Stern-Gerlach
(LSG) interferometry [5] provides direct information
about the longitudinal coherence length of the beam.
More recently, using transverse magnetic gradients, our
group has investigated angular coherence properties [6].
A completely different situation is encountered when
time-dependent fields are used. In the general case where
spatial dependence (field gradients) and time dependence
coexist, both the spatial and temporal parts of the phase
are affected. In other words, for each Zeeman state A/,
the total energy is changed and a net momentum transfer
is allowed to occur. As will be shown later, when a
pulsed magnetic field is used different results are obtained
according to the spatial dependence of the field "seen" by
the particle during the pulse. In order to clarify this
point one may first notice that when thermal kinetic ener-
gies are considered there is no contradiction in assuming
that (i) the size of the wave packet describing the exter-
nal motion is small at the macroscopic scale defined by
the field profile and (ii) it is large compared to the de
Broglie wavelength. Second, in the frequency range of
the time variation of the fields typically used here
(/;SGHz) propagation effects are negligible. We will as-
sume that the magnetic field keeps a fixed direction
throughout the paper as this is the case experimentally.
Hence the Zeeman interaction is diagonal with elements
MW(z)h(t). We shall assume for simplicity that A^l
for / G [/0,'o+ T] and h - 0 elsewhere.
Let us first consider a pure plane wave of longitudinal
momentum K, accompanying a specific Zeeman state M.
If we assume that the initial kinetic energy h2K2/2m is
very large compared with W [7] then, in the presence of
the field pulse, the phase at time t and position z is shifted
by an amount — M<p(Kyz,t) where
hK
<p(K,zj):
h Jo W U-t') h(t'), (la)
m
which for times larger than to+T may be written as
1 rto+t hK
W (/-/') (lb)
h Jt
<> m
This (localized) phase perturbation propagates at a group
velocity of hK/m. For a specific Zeeman state A/, an in-
coming wave packet with a momentum distribution C(K)
evolves into an outgoing wave packet for t > to+T given
by

0031 -9007/93/72 (1)/1(4)$06.00

© 1993 The American Physical Society
 VOLUME 72, NUMBER l P H Y S I C A L REVIEW
hJC
vT^fdKC(K)exp Kz- t-M<p(K,z,t)
2m
(2)
According to hypothesis (i) the size Sz of the wave packet
is very small at the macroscopic scale. Thus in (2), the
coordinate z appearing in W can be considered to be t
dependent [but not necessarily equal to (hK/m)t
4-const]. This is what is meant by "the field seen by the
particle/'
As an example, let us assume that W(z)=s:haz is a
linearly increasing function of z. Then it is readily seen
that the spatiotemporal dependence of the argument
of the exponential in (2) is approximately equal to
[(K-MA)z-(ht/2m)(K-MA)2] where A=aT<£K.
This means that the initial group velocity has changed by
an amount MhA/m, which is just the velocity transfer
due to the time-dependent force — h(t)dzW. In fact this
change in velocity is extremely small and one can use a
cruder approximation to evaluate the interference signal.
Indeed for a quasimonochromatic incoming wave packet
[hypothesis (ii)] described by a carrier wave of wave
number Ko slowly modulated by an envelope Giz — vtf)
where vo^hKo/m, the external motion for a specific M
value is
VM(z,t)^exp{i[Koz-(hK§/2m)t]}G(z-v0t)
xexpUM<p(K0,z,t)]. (3) magnetic field profile, which gives rise to a (velocity) ~ l -
For spin y, the variable part of the interference signal is
just the real part of the overlap between the wave func-
tions associated with M = ± y and is given by
3vn = jdz\6(z-vot)\ :
1 f'o+7*
xcos •t')] (4)
According to hypothesis (i), this becomes
9 T'o+T-
\J var "~~' COS (5)
and this is the result one would obtain from a spin preces-
sion model (in fact this signal has to be further averaged
over some statistical distribution of the central wave
numbers). In the case of the linear potential previous-
ly considered the phase present in (5) reduces to
2hKoA(t0+T/2)/m.
The simplest situation, however, is that encountered
when the field seen by the particle during the pulse is spa- oms essentially behave as particles of spin F**\ (the
tially homogeneous. In this case W — hcQo is constant and large energy separation between this level and the F = 0
substitution in (lb) gives <p=*(DoT, independent of K. level permits us to ignore the latter).
This phase shift is proportional to the area of the pulse
J7° B(t)dt and has been accumulated although no
force acts on the external motion. This effect is known as
the "scalar Aharonov-Bohm effect" (SAB) and was first
discussed, together with its vectorial counterpart, in a
2
LETTERS 3 JANUARY 1994
CEM
FIG. 1. Scheme of the experimental setup. ^An: electron
gun; P,A: polarizer and analyzer; M,M': mixers (see text); JJ:
magnetic shielding; ES: electric shielding; //: pair of
Helmholtz coils; CH: electric chopper; ED: detector electric
field; W\ MgF2 window; CEM: channel electron multiplier.
seminal paper by Aharonov and Bohm [8]. Furry and
Ramsey [9] showed that these effects were essential for
the self-consistency of quantum mechanics. While these
effects were first introduced for charged particles, it was
realized by Zeilinger [10] and Anandan [11] that the
SAB effect could be generalized to neutral spinning parti-
cles. Recently the SAB effect has been demonstrated for
neutrons [12,13]. In a sense this effect is opposite to the
static longitudinal Stern-Gerlach effect. In SAB the ki-
netic energy is a constant while the total energy for a
given M is shifted during the field pulse. Hence the
phase shift only concerns the temporal part of the phase,
a pure spin precession effect totally independent of the ve-
locity [13]. On the contrary, in LSG the total energy is a
constant; only the kinetic energy is shifted within the
dependent phase shift dealing with the external motion.
It is worth noting that SAB and LSG effects appear in
two very different ways when the wave packet is treated
as a carrier wave modulated by a slowly varying envelope.
In SAB the carrier wave is phase shifted but not the en-
velope; hence the contrast of the interference fringes
remains constant even for high order interferences. This
is characteristic of a (nondispersive) topological phase
effect [5]. On the contrary in LSG both carrier wave and
envelope are shifted. Now the contrast tends to zero once
the envelopes for different M values no longer overlap.
In this Letter we report on polarization interferometry
experiments with pulsed magnetic fields using a beam of
metastable hydrogen atoms. The SAB effect for a spin 1
atom and its nondispersivity has been observed, as well as
other effects occurring in the gradient regions where
time-dependent forces and velocity changes are involved.
One should note that the same kinds of experiments have
been reported very recently on neutrons [14]. With the
weak magnetic fields used here ( 5 1 0 G), H* (2s 1/2) at-
The general scheme of the experiment (see Fig. 1), al-
ready described in detail elsewhere [4], is very similar to
that recently used by Badurek et al. [13] for neutrons,
mutatis mutandis. Here the polarizer and the analyzer
are of the Lamb-Retherford type. They simply consist of
VOLUME 72, NUMBER l P H Y S I C A L REVIEW LETTERS
200
N
120
120
FIG. 2. (a) Interference pattern with velocity selection at
v •• 10 km/s. All atoms experience the full pulse of the magnet-
ic field. \H is the magnitude of the current pulse in the
Helmholtz coils, (b) Dotted line: interference pattern of (a);
full line: same as (a) with a selected velocity of 5 km/s.
a transverse 600 G field acting over a length of 20 mm.
Weak and quickly spatially rotating fields are used to
build linear superpositions of Zeeman states ("mixers"
Af,M' in Fig. 1). Metastable H* atoms are produced by
a 120 eV electron bombardment of a thermal H2 beam.
Apart from a small amount (less than 10%) of very fast
atoms (mean velocity of 40 km/s), the time of flight dis-
tribution is roughly Maxwellian with a most probable
time of flight corresponding to a velocity of 10 km/s (the
associated de Broglie wavelength is X =0.45 A). The re-
gion where the pulsed magnetic field is applied is protect-
ed by a triple Mumetal shielding. The pulsed field is pro-
duced by a pair of rectangular Helmholtz coils (1.2x10
cm2, separation 1.2 cm, 5 turns each) supplied by a pulse
generator (maximum intensity ranging from 0 up to 1 A,
time width T of few //s, period of 120-150 //s). In order
to avoid any cancellation of the high frequency com-
ponents ( / ^ 1 0 0 kHz) of the magnetic field by eddy
currents [15] the hollow copper cylinder usually used to
protect the atomic beam from stray electric fields has
been replaced by a metallic spring (60 turns over a length
of 11 cm). The detector, specific to metastable H* at-
3 JANUARY 1994
o^»- Z
l )
\ z' |
N/103
1J c)
2.6j ! 1 1 1
O 0.5 A
TH
FIG. 3. Interference pattern obtained by using the electric
chopper (no velocity selection). In the (z,f) diagram shown in
the upper part, the chopper is located at z —0 and the detector
at z — ZD> The rectangle represents the magneticfieldpulse; the
shaded areas represent schematically the gradient zones. Only
the atoms whose velocity lies in angle F experience the full
pulse.
oms, consists of an electric field (45 V/cm) which induces
the 2s-2p transition, followed by the emission of a Lyman
a photon, detected through a MgF2 window by a channel
electron multiplier. A number of experiments can be per-
formed by pulsing different elements of the device, such
as the electron gun alone (for time-of-flight measure-
ments), or together with the detector electric field (for ve-
locity selection). This setup is completed by an electric
chopper located 4 mm in front of the Helmholtz coils. It
consists of two parallel wires, perpendicular to the beam
and supplied by dc voltages (the field is 600 V/cm over a
length of 2 mm), except during the time of a short pulse
(few jus).
The first series of experiments was specifically devoted
to the SAB effect. In the first one a velocity i , s 1 0 km/s
was selected (with Sv/v = 10%) by pulsing the source
electron gun and the detector field. The magnetic field
pulse (2.9 JUS in duration) was delayed in such a way that
all selected atoms "see" it around the midpoint of the
Helmholtz coils. The pulse height was scanned from 0 up
to 0.91 A and the detector signal accumulated in a syn-
chronously scanned multiscaler. The resulting spectrum
[Fig. 2(a)] shows many visible fringes, the relative phase
ranging from 0 up to about 25;r. The contrast is slightly
decreasing presumably due to the imperfect spatial homo-
geneity of the field. To demonstrate the nondispersivity
of the SAB effect, the experiment has been repeated with
a selected velocity of 5 km/s. In spite of a lower signal
intensity ( x | ) the same number of fringes is observed
[Fig. 2(b)]. Finally we tried to reproduce the neutron ex-
periment of [13] by only pulsing the electric chopper.
The field pulse is the same as before, the delay being ad-
3
VOLUME 72, NUMBER 1 P H Y S I C A L REVIEW
6(MS)
FIG. 4. The velocity r ^ l O km/s is selected. The signal is
plotted as a function of the delay 8 between source and field
pulses. The area of this latter pulse is such that the full phase
shift is 3/r. Points: experiment; full line: calculation.
justed such that atoms of velocity 10 km/s see the entire
pulse. Once again many fringes are visible (Fig. 3), how-
ever, (i) the mean contrast is lower than previously be-
cause the chopper only acts on H* (2s) atoms and not on
the UV photons directly emitted from the source; (ii) the
contrast decreases with the interference order because the
length of the field zone is too short and the distance be-
tween the chopper and the entrance of this zone too large
to prevent an important fraction of the atoms from only
partially seeing the field pulse Isee the (z,/) diagram in
Fig. 3].
In a second type of experiment an attempt was made to
study the effects of the borders of the spatial field profile.
The source and the detector are pulsed (pulse duration: 1
and 2 j/s, respectively) with a delay so that the r = 10
km/s velocity is selected. The area of the magnetic field
pulse (5 /is x 70.6 mA) is such that the full phase shift is
3/r. The signal is plotted as a function of the delay 8 be-
tween the beginning of the source pulse and that of the
field pulse (Fig. 4). If the delay is too small (8 < 1 us) or
too large (8 > 34 fis) the selected atoms do not see the
pulse and, hence, the phase shift is zero. For delays
within the interval [15 ^s, 21.5 /is] the atoms experience
the full pulse (^-OJT, dark fringe). At intermediate
values of 8 the phase shift continuously varies from 0 to
3/r. Thus dark Op"*) and bright (^ — 2/0 fringes are
visible on both sides. For a perfect mixing mechanism in
regions M and M\ the variable part of the theoretical sig-
nal for an atom with velocity v is
cos" 2ft
1
f t0+T
dt'Wivt') (6)
Note that (5) is not valid here since the spin value is 1
[4], Because of the gun and detector widths, to is distri-
buted in some interval around 8. This has been taken
into account in the calculation presented in Fig. 4 as well
as the velocity spread around c As one can see, the gen-
eral behavior is well reproduced even if there is some
discrepancy for 8 > 20 //s. Apart from some possible ex-
LETTERS 3 JANUARY 1994
perimental artifacts, this could mean that the spin preces-
sion model is too crude an approximation when the pulse
is applied in the magnetic gradients.
As mentioned previously this is just the first attempt on
the study of interference effects in the presence of time-
dependent forces. More precise experiments using well
defined longitudinal or transverse gradients are currently
in progress.
This work has been supported by an EC contract [No.
SC1*-CT91-0712 (TSTS)] and by a NATO contract
(No. CRG 910877). One of us (S.N.C.) thanks the EC
Commission for the provision of a SCIENCE Bursary
(No. B/SC1*915186). Laboratoire de Physique des
Lasers is associe au CNRS, URA 282.
*Permanent address: St. Patrick's College, Maynooth, Ire-
land.
^Permanent address: City College, New York, New York
10031.
[l] For coherence properties of matter waves, see, for in-
stance, D. Gabor, Rev. Mod. Phys. 28, 260 (1956).
[2] T. Bitter and D. Dubbers, Phys. Rev. Lett. 59, 251
(1987).
[3] H. Weinfurter and G. Badurek, Phys. Rev. Lett. 64, 1318
(1990).
[4] Ch. Miniatura, J. Robert, O. Gorceix, V. Lorent, S. Le
Boiteux, J. Reinhardt, and J. Baudon, Phys. Rev. Lett.
69,261 (1992).
[5] J. Robert, Ch. Miniatura, O. Gorceix, S. Le Boiteux, V.
Lorent, J. Reinhardt, and J. Baudon, J. Phys. II (France)
2,601 (1992).
[6] J. Robert, Ch. Miniatura, S. Nic Chormaic, O. Gorceix,
S. Feron, V. Lorent, J. Reinhardt, and J. Baudon (to be
published).
[7] L. Landau and E. Lifchitz, Mecanique Quantique (Edi-
tions Mir, Moscow, 1980), p. 190.
[8] Y. Aharonov and D. Bohm, Phys. Rev. 115, 485 (1959).
[91 W. H. Furry and N. F. Ramsey, Phys. Rev. 118, 623
(1960).
[10] A. Zeilinger, in Fundamental Aspects of Quantum
Theory, NATO ASI Ser. B, Vol. 144, edited by V. Sorini
and A. Frigerio (Plenum, New York, 1985).
[Ill J. Anandan, in Proceedings of the 3rd International
Symposium on the Foundations of Quantum Mechanics,
Tokyo, 1989 (Physical Society of Japan, Tokyo, 1990),
pp. 98-106.
[12] B. E. Allman, A. Cimmino, A. G. Klein, G. I. Opat, H.
Kaiser, and S. A. Werner, Phys. Rev. Lett. 68, 2409
(1992).
[131 G. Badurek, H. Weinfurter, R. Gahler, A. Kollmar, S.
Wehinger, and A. Zeilinger, Phys. Rev. Lett. 71, 307
(1993).
[141 B. E. Allman, A. Cimmino, A. G. Klein, G. I. Opat, H.
Kaiser, and S. A. Werner, Phys. Rev. A 48, 1799 (1993).
[15] Special thanks are due to Dr. M. Devoret (Groupe de
Quantronique, CEA, Saclay, France) who first drew our
attention to this important point.