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Updated: Nov 5, 2025

Gradient Echo Quantum Memory in Warm Atomic Vapor
Published on: November 11, 2013
Impulsively Excited Gravitational Quantum States: Echoes and Time-Resolved Spectroscopy
I Tutunnikov1, K V Rajitha1, A Yu Voronin2
1AMOS and Department of Chemical and Biological Physics, The Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 7610001, Israel.
Abstract:
We theoretically study an impulsively excited quantum bouncer (QB)-a particle bouncing off a surface in the presence of gravity. A pair of time-delayed pulsed excitations is shown to induce a wave-packet echo effect-a partial rephasing of the QB wave function appearing at twice the delay between pulses. In addition, an appropriately chosen observable [here, the population of the ground gravitational quantum state (GQS)] recorded as a function of the delay is shown to contain the transition frequencies between the GQSs, their populations, and partial phase information about the wave-packet quantum amplitudes. The wave-packet echo effect is a promising candidate method for precision studies of GQSs of ultracold neutrons, atoms, and antiatoms confined in closed gravitational traps.
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