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Physical Review Letters

Probing Bose-Einstein condensed atoms with short laser pulses

Maciej Lewenstein, Li You

Published Aug 30, 1993• 70 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We propose a method of probing a system of cooled atoms in a trap using short laser pulses. Above the critical temperature for Bose-Einstein condensation such a system scatters very weakly. Coherent scattering occurs primarily in the forward direction. Below the critical temperature, the number of scattered photons increases dramatically and the scattered light is emitted in the solid angle determined by the size of the condensate.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.71.1339

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We propose a method of probing a system of cooled atoms in a trap using short laser pulses. Above the critical temperature for Bose-Einstein condensation such a system scatters very weakly. Coherent scattering occurs primarily in the forward direction. Below the critical temperature, the number of scattered photons increases dramatically and the scattered light is emitted in the solid angle determined by the size of the condensate.
We discuss a method for probing a system of cold bosonic atoms in a trap using intense short laser pulses. Above the critical temperature for Bose-Einstein condensation, such a system scatters very weakly. Coherent scattering occurs primarily in the forward direction within a solid angle determined by phase matching conditions for the thermal atomic distribution. Below the critical temperature, the number of scattered photons increases dramatically and the scattered light is emitted into a solid angle determined by the size of the condensate. Quantum statistics of the atoms explicitly effect the spectrum as well as the squeezing properties of the scattered light. The theory accounts for the atom-atom interactions.
Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) of atoms with attractive interactions is profoundly different from BEC of atoms with repulsive interactions. We describe experiments with Bose condensates of 7Li atoms, which are weakly attracting at ultralow temperature. We measure the distribution of condensate occupation numbers occurring in the gas using a near-resonant optical probe to image the atom cloud. This data shows that the number is limited and demonstrates the dynamics of condensate growth and collapse due to the attractive interactions.