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Updated: Aug 17, 2026

High Resolution Phonon-assisted Quasi-resonance Fluorescence Spectroscopy
Published on: June 28, 2016
Photon recoil momentum in dispersive media
Gretchen K Campbell1, Aaron E Leanhardt, Jongchul Mun
1MIT-Harvard Center for Ultracold Atoms, Research Laboratory of Electronics and Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA.
Abstract:
A systematic shift of the photon recoil momentum due to the index of refraction of a dilute gas of atoms has been observed. The recoil frequency was determined with a two-pulse light grating interferometer using near-resonant laser light. The results show that the recoil momentum of atoms caused by the absorption of a photon is n variant Planck's k, where n is the index of refraction of the gas and k is the vacuum wave vector of the photon. This systematic effect must be accounted for in high-precision atom interferometry with light gratings.
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