Correlations and Counting Statistics of an Atom Laser
Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics
2009-11-11 v2 Atomic Physics
Quantum Physics
Abstract
We demonstrate time-resolved counting of single atoms extracted from a weakly interacting Bose-Einstein condensate of Rb atoms. The atoms are detected with a high-finesse optical cavity and single atom transits are identified. An atom laser beam is formed by continuously output coupling atoms from the Bose-Einstein condensate. We investigate the full counting statistics of this beam and measure its second order correlation function in a Hanbury Brown and Twiss type experiment. For the monoenergetic atom laser we observe a constant correlation function and an atom number distribution close to a Poissonian statistics. A pseudo-thermal atomic beam shows a bunching behavior and a Bose distributed counting statistics.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0508439,
title = {Correlations and Counting Statistics of an Atom Laser},
author = {Anton Öttl and Stephan Ritter and Michael Köhl and Tilman Esslinger},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0508439},
year = {2009}
}