Parametric Amplification of Atoms

We have observed parametric generation and amplification of ultracold atom pairs. A 87Rb Bose-Einstein condensate was loaded into a one-dimensional optical lattice with quasimomentum k0 and spontaneously scattered into two final states with quasimomenta k1 and k2 . Furthermore, when a seed of atoms was first created with quasimomentum k1 we observed parametric amplification of scattered atoms pairs in states k1 and k2 when the phase-matching condition was fulfilled. This process is analogous to optical parametric generation (OPG) and amplification (OPA) of photons and could be used to efficiently create entangled pairs of atoms. Furthermore, these results explain the dynamic instability of condensates in moving lattices observed in recent experiments.