Measurement of the ac Stark shift with a guided matter-wave interferometer

Abstract

The dynamic polarizability of $^{87}\mathrm{Rb}$ atoms was measured using a guided-wave Bose-Einstein condensate interferometer. Taking advantage of the large arm separations obtainable in our device, a well-calibrated laser beam is applied to one atomic packet and not the other, inducing a differential phase shift. The technique requires relatively low laser intensity and works for arbitrary optical frequencies. For off-resonant light, the ac polarizability is obtained with a statistical accuracy of 3% and a calibration uncertainty of 6%. On resonance, the dispersion-shaped behavior of the Stark shift is observed, but with a broadened linewidth that is attributed to collective light scattering effects. The resulting nonlinearity may prove useful for the production and control of squeezed quantum states.