Longitudinal quantum interferometry

Abstract

We describe an interferometric method to uncover the quantum state $|\ensuremath{\psi}〉$ describing a single-mode cavity field. The information needed to retrieve the corresponding Fock coefficients is imprinted on the quantized longitudinal motion of atoms that have interacted with the cavity field. In particular, we show that a set of four atomic momentum distributions can be analyzed easily to reconstruct $|\ensuremath{\psi}〉$.