Spinor condensates and light scattering from Bose-Einstein condensates

Abstract

These notes discuss two aspects of the physics of atomic Bose-Einstein condensates: optical properties and spinor condensates. The first topic includes light scattering experiments which probe the excitations of a condensate in both the free-particle and phonon regime. At higher light intensity, a new form of superradiance and phase-coherent matter wave amplification were observed. We also discuss properties of spinor condensates and describe studies of ground--state spin domain structures and dynamical studies which revealed metastable excited states and quantum tunneling.Comment: 58 pages, 33 figures, to appear in Proceedings of Les Houches 1999 Summer School, Session LXXI