The aim of this project is to perform the world-first experimental demonstration of the famous Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox with macroscopic ensembles of entangled atoms.

Once thought esoteric, the theories and constructs of quantum mechanics have now had a profound effect on our society. Over the last five decades the engineering of quantum properties of matter and light have led to the production of the diode, the transistor and the laser diode that are the building blocks of our computational, communications and information infrastructure.

This project aims to perform experiments using Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) of metastable helium (⁴He*) atoms to answer fundamental questions about Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) entanglement and quantum correlations with atoms. In particular the project aims to:

• probe entanglement and correlation properties of a He* atom laser
• implement a scheme to generate and detect continuous variable entanglement between two atomic matter wave pulses originating from a⁴He* BEC. Furthermore, using this experiment we will investigate the degree to which the EPR inequality for field quadrature entanglement can be violated.
• collide a BEC of⁴He* atoms with a degenerate Fermi gas (DFG) of³He* atoms and probe boson-boson, fermion-fermion, and fermion-boson correlations between the scattered atoms.