SEPARATION AND SUPERPOSITION OF ATOMIC WAVE-PACKETS BY REFLECTION AND TRANSMISSION BY AN OPTICAL RIPPLE MIRROR

In this paper, we investigate the reflection and transmission of an atomic wave by an optical ripple mirror which may be realized by a standing-wave laser field. We show that the ripple mirror can operate as a separator of the incident atomic waves corresponding to different internal states by reflection and transmission. For different laser parameters, the atomic ripple mirror can reflect one linear combination of two ground states and transmit the orthogonal linear combination. The transmitted superposition state corresponds to the well-known ''dark'' state. The atomic wave function is a coherent superposition of reflected and transmitted waves entangled with different internal states.