Coherent cold collisions with neutral atoms in optical lattices

By loading a Bose-Einstein condensate into a three-dimensional optical lattice potential, we have been able to demonstrate several fundamental aspects of coherent cold collisions between neutral atoms. We show experimentally how such collisions lead to a well-defined phase shift in the corresponding many-body wave function. The experimental realization of such interactions can be fundamental for the simulation of complex condensed-matter-physics Hamiltonians, for the creation of large-scale entanglement and for the realization of quantum gates with neutral atoms.