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Originally published in Science Express on 15 September 2005
Science 28 October 2005:
Vol. 310. no. 5748, pp. 648 - 651
DOI: 10.1126/science.1118024
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Reports

Hanbury Brown Twiss Effect for Ultracold Quantum Gases

M. Schellekens,1 R. Hoppeler,1 A. Perrin,1 J. Viana Gomes,1,2 D. Boiron,1 A. Aspect,1 C. I. Westbrook1*

We have studied two-body correlations of atoms in an expanding cloud above and below the Bose-Einstein condensation threshold. The observed correlation function for a thermal cloud shows a bunching behavior, whereas the correlation is flat for a coherent sample. These quantum correlations are the atomic analog of the Hanbury Brown Twiss effect. We observed the effect in three dimensions and studied its dependence on cloud size.

1 Laboratoire Charles Fabry de l'Institut d'Optique, UMR 8501 du CNRS, Centre Scientifique d'Orsay, Bâtiment 503, 91403 Orsay CEDEX, France.
2 Departimento de Fisica, Universidade do Minho, 4710-057 Braga, Portugal.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: christoph.westbrook{at}iota.u-psud.fr

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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)