Destruction of interference by many-body interactions in cold atomic Bose gases

We study the effects of many-body interactions on the interference in a Mach-Zehnder interferometer for matter waves of ultracold Bose atoms. After switching off an axial trapping potential, the thermal initial wave packet expands, and subsequently interference fringes may be observed in a circular one-dimensional trap. These are computed for axial harmonic or delta-function traps, and for interaction strengths from the Thomas-Fermi regime to the Tonks-Girardeau limit. It is shown that many-body correlations in a realistic setup destroy interference to a large degree. Analytical expressions allowing to infer the observability of phase coherence and interference are provided.