All-optical imprinting of geometric phases onto matter waves

Abstract

Traditional optical phase imprinting of matter waves is of a dynamical nature. Here we show that both Abelian and non-Abelian geometric phases can be optically imprinted onto matter waves, yielding a number of interesting phenomena such as wave-packet redirecting and wave-packet splitting. In addition to their fundamental interest, our results open up opportunities for robust optical control of matter waves. © 2009 The American Physical Society.