An Atom Interferometric Approach for Measuring Geometric Phases in Connection with the Abraham-Minkowski Controversy

The Abraham-Minkowski controversy (AMC) refers to the ambiguity in defining the momentum of light within a dielectric medium. Most efforts which have gone into elucidating this curiosity have focussed on the simple case of a non-dispersive medium. Real media are dispersive, however, and this dispersion will lead to the presence of an additional geometric phase over and above the optical HMW phase (present also in non-dispersive media) in an atom interferometry experiment.