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Originally published in Science Express on 27 March 2003
Science 18 April 2003:
Vol. 300. no. 5618, pp. 475 - 478
DOI: 10.1126/science.1083171
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Reports

The Onset of Matter-Wave Amplification in a Superradiant Bose-Einstein Condensate

Dominik Schneble,* Yoshio Torii,{dagger} Micah Boyd, Erik W. Streed, David E. Pritchard, Wolfgang Ketterle

The interaction of short and strong laser pulses with an atomic Bose-Einstein condensate is found to generate patterns of recoiling atoms that are different from those seen in previous light-scattering experiments. This phenomenon can only be explained by optical stimulation, showing that the previous description of superradiance as atomic stimulation is incomplete and that matter-wave amplification in Bose-Einstein condensates is suppressed at short times. Our experiments clarify the nature of bosonic stimulation in the four-wave mixing of light and atoms.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology–Harvard Center for Ultracold Atoms, Research Laboratory of Electronics and Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.



{dagger} Present address: Department of Physics, University of Tokyo, 3-8-1 Komaba, Meguro-Ku, Tokyo, Japan.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: schneble{at}mit.edu

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