Experiments on One-Dimensional Bose Gases: From Thomas Fermi to Tonks-Girardeau
Open Access
Author:
Wenger, Trevor
Graduate Program:
Physics
Degree:
Doctor of Philosophy
Document Type:
Dissertation
Date of Defense:
December 11, 2006
Committee Members:
David Scott Weiss, Committee Chair/Co-Chair Kurt Gibble, Committee Member Milton Walter Cole, Committee Member Qiang Du, Committee Member
Keywords:
Bose Einstein Condensate 1D Bose gas Tonks gas
Abstract:
A set of experiments was performed on a one-dimensional Bose gas system. A 3D
Bose-Einstein condensate of 87Rb atoms was formed in an all-optical trap. The BEC was
then loaded into a 2D optical lattice that consists of an array of parallel 1D tubes.
Measurements of the energy, cloud size, and local pair correlation function probe the
properties of the gas from the weak coupling to strong coupling (Tonks-Girardeau) limit.
The characteristic property of fermionization of the wave functions was observed in the
TG limit.
Another experiment was done to probe the nature on non-equilibrium 1D Bose gases.
This integrable system, when placed in a non-equilibrium momentum distribution, was
found not to thermalize on the time scale of our experiment (hundreds of trap oscillations
or thousands of collisions). This is in stark contrast to the 3D case, which thermalizes on
the order of 3 trap oscillations.
