Adiabatic-rapid-passage multiphoton Bragg atom optics

The combination of adiabatic rapid passage and multiphoton Bragg diffraction (ARPMB pulses) to efficiently transfer many photon recoils of momentum (k) to cold-atom clouds is theoretically and experimentally investigated. This method is insensitive to perturbations of the pulse intensity or detuning. In particular, the theoretically calculated velocity acceptance can be up to $80%$ of one recoil velocity vᵣ, the theoretical maximum in Bragg diffraction. We experimentally demonstrate ARPMB pulses with transfer efficiency of 99.7$%$ per k using 10k pulses, limited by spontaneous emission losses, and Mach-Zehnder interferometers with $80%$ contrast.