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Near Resonant Spatial Images of Confined Bose-Einstein Condensates in the '4D' Magnetic Bottle

Lene Vestergaard Hau, B. D. Busch, Chien Liu, Zachary Dutton, Michael M. Burns, J. A. Golovchenko

cond-matarXiv:cond-mat/9804278

Abstract

We present quantitative measurements of the spatial density profile of Bose-Einstein condensates of sodium atoms confined in a new '4D' magnetic bottle. The condensates are imaged in transmission with near resonant laser light. We demonstrate that the Thomas-Fermi surface of a condensate can be determined to better than 1%. More generally, we obtain excellent agreement with mean-field theory. We conclude that precision measurements of atomic scattering lengths and interactions between phase separated cold atoms in a harmonic trap can be measured with high precision using this method.

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