Speaker
Prof.
Wolfgang Schleich
( University of Ulm, Texas A&M University)
Description
Motivated by the nonlinear Schrödinger equation of Kostin we propose a novel method to
extract kinetic energy from an ensemble of quantum particles. This task is achieved by applying
external time-dependent forces governed by the phase of the wave function. In particular, we
demonstrate that a Gaussian wave packet climbing an appropriately designed inverted
harmonic oscillator potential creates a momentum eigenstate arbitrarily close to one with a
vanishing eigenvalue. We also suggest an experiment with cold atoms which can be realized
with state-of-the-art technology.
This work was performed in collaboration with H. Losert, F. Ullinger, M. Zimmermann, M.A.
Efremov, and E.M. Rasel.
