Decoherence of cold atomic gases in magnetic microtraps

We derive a model to describe decoherence of atomic clouds in atom-chip traps taking the excited states of the trapping potential into account. We use this model to investigate decoherence for a single trapping well and for a pair of trapping wells that form the two arms of an atom interferometer. Including the discrete spectrum of the trapping potential gives rise to a decoherence mechanism with a decoherence rate G that scales like G;1/r0 4 with the distance r0 from the trap minimum to the wire.