Phys. Rev. Lett. 79, 337–340 (1997)Coherence, Correlations, and Collisions: What One Learns about Bose-Einstein Condensates from Their DecayReceived 2 May 1997; published in the issue dated 21 July 1997 We have used three-body recombination rates as a sensitive probe of the statistical correlations between atoms in Bose-Einstein condensates (BEC) and in ultracold noncondensed dilute atomic gases. We infer that density fluctuations are suppressed in the BEC samples. We measured the three-body recombination rate constants for condensates and cold noncondensates from number loss in the F = 1,mf = -1 hyperfine state of 87Rb. The ratio of these is 7.4(2.6) which agrees with the theoretical factor of 3! and demonstrates that condensate atoms are less bunched than noncondensate atoms. © 1997 The American Physical Society URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.79.337
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevLett.79.337
PACS:
03.75.Fi, 05.30.Jp, 32.80.Pj, 42.50.Dv
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