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Optical detection of a fractional particle number in an atomic Fermi-Dirac gas

Research output: Contribution to Journal/MagazineJournal articlepeer-review

Published
Article number150404
<mark>Journal publication date</mark>8/10/2003
<mark>Journal</mark>Physical review letters
Issue number15
Volume91
Number of pages4
Publication StatusPublished
<mark>Original language</mark>English

Abstract

We consider a Fermi-Dirac atomic gas in a one-dimensional optical lattice coupled to a coherent electromagnetic field with a topologically nontrivial soliton phase profile. We argue that the resulting fractional eigenvalues of the particle number operator can be detected via light scattering. This could be a truly quantum mechanical measurement of the particle number fractionalization in a dilute atomic gas.