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Beam quality of a nonideal atom laser
1Laboratoire Charles Fabry de l'Institut d'Optique, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique et Université Paris Sud 11, Bât. 503, Campus Universitaire d'Orsay, 91403 Orsay Cedex, France. Jean-Felix.Riou@iota.u-psud.fr
Abstract:
We study the propagation of a noninteracting atom laser distorted by the strong lensing effect of the Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) from which it is outcoupled. We observe a transverse structure containing caustics that vary with the density within the residing BEC. Using the WKB approximation, Fresnel-Kirchhoff integral formalism, and ABCD matrices, we are able to describe analytically the atom-laser propagation. This allows us to characterize the quality of the nonideal atom-laser beam by a generalized M2 factor defined in analogy to photon lasers. Finally we measure this quality factor for different lensing effects.
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