A complementarity experiment with an interferometer at the quantum–classical boundary

P. Bertet, S. Osnaghi, A. Rauschenbeutel, G. Nogues, A. Auffeves, M. Brune, J. M. Raimond and S. Haroche ()
Additional contact information
P. Bertet: Laboratoire Kastler Brossel, Ecole Normale Supérieure
S. Osnaghi: Laboratoire Kastler Brossel, Ecole Normale Supérieure
A. Rauschenbeutel: Laboratoire Kastler Brossel, Ecole Normale Supérieure
G. Nogues: Laboratoire Kastler Brossel, Ecole Normale Supérieure
A. Auffeves: Laboratoire Kastler Brossel, Ecole Normale Supérieure
M. Brune: Laboratoire Kastler Brossel, Ecole Normale Supérieure
J. M. Raimond: Laboratoire Kastler Brossel, Ecole Normale Supérieure
S. Haroche: Laboratoire Kastler Brossel, Ecole Normale Supérieure

Nature, 2001, vol. 411, issue 6834, 166-170

Abstract: Abstract To illustrate the quantum mechanical principle of complementarity, Bohr1 described an interferometer with a microscopic slit that records the particle's path. Recoil of the quantum slit causes it to become entangled with the particle, resulting in a kind of Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen pair2. As the motion of the slit can be observed, the ambiguity of the particle's trajectory is lifted, suppressing interference effects. In contrast, the state of a sufficiently massive slit does not depend on the particle's path; hence, interference fringes are visible. Although many experiments illustrating various aspects of complementarity have been proposed3,4,5,6,7,8,9 and realized10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18, none has addressed the quantum–classical limit in the design of the interferometer. Here we report an experimental investigation of complementarity using an interferometer in which the properties of one of the beam-splitting elements can be tuned continuously from being effectively microscopic to macroscopic. Following a recent proposal19, we use an atomic double-pulse Ramsey interferometer20, in which microwave pulses act as beam-splitters for the quantum states of the atoms. One of the pulses is a coherent field stored in a cavity, comprising a small, adjustable mean photon number. The visibility of the interference fringes in the final atomic state probability increases with this photon number, illustrating the quantum to classical transition.

Date: 2001
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/35075517 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:411:y:2001:i:6834:d:10.1038_35075517

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/35075517

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().