Abstract

A fascinating aspect of Bose-Einstein condensation is that the atoms form a coherent matter wave field that resembles an “atom laser.” This suggests the possibility of a nonlinear atom optics. We propose that such a nonlinear optics results when an atomic Bose-condensed gas, described by a coherent field Ψ₁(r), is coherently coupled to bound molecular states of the atoms. Since the resulting molecules are formed coherently, they are also described by a field Ψ₂(r). That is, one has coupled atomic and molecular Bose condensates, leading to a kind of “super-chemistry” in which the formation of molecules is a controlled quantum process, without effects of thermal averaging. We consider a specific model of the coupling based on stimulated Raman transitions between free and bound states of pairs of atoms in the gas, and show that the condensates are described by the coupled wave equations

© 1999 Optical Society of America