Microwave-stimulated Raman adiabatic passage in a Bose-Einstein condensate on an atom chip

Abstract : We report the achievement of stimulated Raman adiabatic passage (STIRAP) in the microwave frequency range between internal states of a Bose-Einstein condensate magnetically trapped in the vicinity of an atom chip. The STIRAP protocol used in this experiment is robust to external perturbations as it is an adiabatic transfer and power efficient as it involves only resonant (or quasiresonant) processes. Taking into account the effect of losses and collisions in a nonlinear Bloch equations model, we show that the maximum transfer efficiency is obtained for nonzero values of the one- and two-photon detunings, which is confirmed quantitatively by our experimental measurements.