Beyond spontaneously broken symmetry in Bose-Einstein condensates

W. J. Mullin, F. Laloë

Published 2009-12-29, updated 2009-12-31Version 2

Spontaneous symmetry breaking (SSB) for Bose-Einstein condensates cannot treat phase off-diagonal effects, and thus not explain Bell inequality violations. We describe another situation that is beyond a SSB treatment: an experiment where particles from two (possibly macroscopic) condensate sources are used for conjugate measurements of the relative phase and populations. Off-diagonal phase effects are characterized by a "quantum angle" and observed via "population oscillations", signaling quantum interference of macroscopically distinct states (QIMDS).