Probing a Bose-Einstein condensate with an atom laser

A pulsed atom laser derived from a Bose-Einstein condensate is used to probe a second target condensate. The target condensate scatters the incident atom laser pulse. From the spatial distribution of scattered atoms, one can infer important properties of the target condensate and its interaction with the probe pulse. As an example, we measure the s-wave scattering length that, in low energy collisions, describes the interaction between the vertical bar F = 1, m(F) = -1 > and vertical bar F = 2, m(F) = 0 > hyperfine ground states in Rb-87. (c) 2008 Optical Society of America.