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

摘要

We present quantitative measurements of the spatial density profile ofBose-Einstein condensates of sodium atoms confined in a new '4D' magneticbottle. The condensates are imaged in transmission with near resonant laserlight. We demonstrate that the Thomas-Fermi surface of a condensate can bedetermined to better than 1%. More generally, we obtain excellent agreementwith mean-field theory. We conclude that precision measurements of atomicscattering lengths and interactions between phase separated cold atoms in aharmonic trap can be measured with high precision using this method.