Atomic focusing by quantum fields: Entanglement properties

The coherent manipulation of the atomic matter waves is of great interest both in science and technology. In order to study how an atom optic device alters the coherence of an atomic beam, we consider the quantum lens proposed by Averbukh et al. [1] to show the discrete nature of the electromagnetic field. We extend the analysis of this quantum lens to the study of another essentially quantum property present in the focusing process, i.e., the atom-field entanglement, and show how the initial atomic coherence and purity are affected by the entanglement. The dynamics of this process is obtained in closed form. We calculate the beam quality factor and the trace of the square of the reduced density matrix as a function of the average photon number in order to analyze the coherence and purity of the atomic beam during the focusing process. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.