Measurement of the He-McKellar-Wilkens Topological Phase by Atom Interferometry and Test of Its Independence with Atom Velocity

J. Gillot, S. Lepoutre, A. Gauguet, M. Büchner, and J. Vigué

Phys. Rev. Lett. 111, 030401 – Published 15 July 2013

Abstract

In this Letter, we report a measurement of the He-McKellar-Wilkens (HMW) topological phase by atom interferometry. The experiment is done with our lithium atom interferometer, and in order to suppress the stray effects present in our first experiment, we use optical pumping of the ${}^{7}{Li}$ atoms in their $F = 2$ , $m_{F} = + 2$ (or $- 2$ ) ground state sublevel. In these conditions, the measured phase shift is the sum of the HMW phase and of the Aharonov-Casher phase, which are separated due to their different $m_{F}$ dependence. The HMW phase has been measured for different lithium beam velocities and the results are in very good agreement with a phase independent of the atom velocity, as expected for a topological phase.