Casting shadows: imaging techniques for ultracold atomic clouds.
Abstract
Imaging is the primary tool in all the experimental activities involving cold atoms: study of Bose-Einstein condensates, clocks and metrology, quantum simulations. Different techniques have been developed in the years, each of them exploiting the detailed structure of the atomic energy levels by a wise choice of frequency and intensity of the fields which are shined on the sample. They can be used, for instance, to obtain the spatial distribution of the atoms even at extreme densities, or to make a real time movie of the dynamics of the system. I will present some of these techniques developed in my experimental group, along with recent applications and results.