Observation of the first excited transverse mode in guided matter waves

Abstract

In direct analogy to the textbook example of light guided in a few-mode fiber (FMF), we report the observation of the first excited mode of an optically guided atomic beam. We selectively excite the atomic analog of the LP₀₁ optical mode by controlling the energy distribution of ultracold atoms loaded into the guide, resulting in a modal structure dominated by a 47(2)% population in the first excited transverse mode. The ability to guide lower-order modes has been essential to demonstrating optical effects such as multimode interferometry, slow light, and entanglement, and an atomic analog to a FMF may lead to similarly useful applications.