Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Introduction
- 2 The non-interacting Bose gas
- 3 Atomic properties
- 4 Trapping and cooling of atoms
- 5 Interactions between atoms
- 6 Theory of the condensed state
- 7 Dynamics of the condensate
- 8 Microscopic theory of the Bose gas
- 9 Rotating condensates
- 10 Superfluidity
- 11 Trapped clouds at non-zero temperature
- 12 Mixtures and spinor condensates
- 13 Interference and correlations
- 14 Optical lattices
- 15 Lower dimensions
- 16 Fermions
- 17 From atoms to molecules
- Appendix: Fundamental constants and conversion factors
- Index
13 - Interference and correlations
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 January 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Introduction
- 2 The non-interacting Bose gas
- 3 Atomic properties
- 4 Trapping and cooling of atoms
- 5 Interactions between atoms
- 6 Theory of the condensed state
- 7 Dynamics of the condensate
- 8 Microscopic theory of the Bose gas
- 9 Rotating condensates
- 10 Superfluidity
- 11 Trapped clouds at non-zero temperature
- 12 Mixtures and spinor condensates
- 13 Interference and correlations
- 14 Optical lattices
- 15 Lower dimensions
- 16 Fermions
- 17 From atoms to molecules
- Appendix: Fundamental constants and conversion factors
- Index
Summary
Bose–Einstein condensates of particles behave in many ways like coherent radiation fields, and the realization of Bose–Einstein condensation in dilute gases has opened up the experimental study of interactions between coherent matter waves. In addition, the existence of these dilute trapped quantum gases has prompted a re-examination of a number of theoretical issues.
In Sec. 13.1 we discuss Josephson tunnelling of a condensate between two wells and the role of fluctuations in particle number and phase. The number and phase variables play a key role in the description of the classic interference experiment, in which two clouds of atoms are allowed to expand and overlap (Sec. 13.2). Rather surprisingly, an interference pattern is produced even though initially the two clouds are completely isolated. Density fluctuations in a Bose gas are studied in Sec. 13.3, where we relate atomic clock shifts to the two-particle correlation function. The ability to manipulate gaseous Bose–Einstein condensates by lasers has made possible the study of coherent matter wave optics and in Sec. 13.4 we describe applications of these techniques to observe solitons, Bragg scattering, and non-linear mixing of matter waves. How to characterize Bose–Einstein condensation in terms of the density matrix is the subject of Sec. 13.5, where we also consider fragmented condensates.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Bose–Einstein Condensation in Dilute Gases , pp. 365 - 400Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2008