Interference in a Bose-Einstein Condensate

Abstract

A BEC can be viewed as a giant matter wave, this means that it can show interference. By creating a double-well potential we can split a BEC into two parts. After turning off the potential the BEC will start to expand because of its chemical potential. As the BEC's expand and the two matter waves superpose they show an interference pattern. In this thesis it is described how to succesfully create such a double-well potential. The potential created is stable, however not symmetric. The reason why it is not symmetric is investigated and it can be concluded that for a symmetric potential an optical dipole potential with a crosssection of around 10 micrometer is preferable. A description is given of the interference pattern that arises from different expansion time and different height of the potential barrier. Because the potential is not symmetric a dependence arises that causes the interference pattern not to be constant in space as observed in previous experiments. This might be an advantage for determining the phase difference between two BEC's.