Spinor Bose-Einstein-condensate phase-sensitive amplifier for SU(1,1) interferometry

The SU(1,1) interferometer was originally conceived as a Mach-Zehnder interferometer with the beam-splitters replaced by parametric amplifiers. The parametric amplifiers produce states with correlations that result in enhanced phase sensitivity. F = 1 spinor Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) can serve as the parametric amplifiers for an atomic version of such an interferometer by collisionally producing entangled pairs of |F = 1, m = ±1⟩ atoms. We simulate the effect of single and double-sided seeding of the inputs to the amplifier using the truncated-Wigner approximation. We find that single-sided seeding degrades the performance of the interferometer exactly at the phase the unseeded interferometer should operate the best. Double-sided seeding results in a phase- sensitive amplifier, where the maximal sensitivity is a function of the phase relationship between the input states of the amplifier. In both single and double-sided seeding we find there exists an optimal phase shift that achieves sensitivity beyond the standard quantum limit. Experimentally, we demonstrate a spinor phase-sensitive amplifier using a BEC of 23Na in an optical dipole trap. This configuration could be used as an input to such an interferometer. We are able to control the initial phase of the double-seeded amplifier, and demonstrate sensitivity to initial population fractions as small as 0.1%.