Twisting, Binding, and Probing Matter Waves in a Rubidium Cavity-QED system

Large ensembles of laser-cooled atoms interacting via photon-mediated interactions are powerful platforms for quantum simulation and sensing. In this work, I will present a cavity-QED system with matter waves coupled to a high-finesse cavity. In this system, we successfully generated entanglement between atomic momentum states and realized the first entangled matter-wave interferometer. Without coupling the momentum states to the internal states, we also realized momentum-exchange interactions and collective XYZ models in a Bragg interferometer, which leads to one and two-axis counter-twisting dynamics with momentum states, and a collective recoil mechanism that effectively binds wave packets together to suppress Doppler dephasing.