2004/05/24 by Nicholas R. Thomas, Niels Kjærgaard, Niels Kjaergaard +3 · 14 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Atomic and Subatomic Physics Research #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #Quantum, superfluid, helium dynamics #cond-mat.other
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.93.173201
published as Physical Review Letters 93, 173201 (2004) · 4 pages, 4 figures
arxiv created 2004/05/24 · openalex publication_date 2004/10/22 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We report on the direct imaging of s and d partial-wave interference in cold collisions of atoms. Two ultracold clouds of 87Rb atoms were accelerated by magnetic fields to collide at energies near a d-wave shape resonance. The resulting halos of scattered particles were imaged using laser absorption. By scanning across the resonance we observed a marked evolution of the scattering patterns due to the energy dependent phase shifts for the interfering s and d waves. Since only two partial-wave states are involved in the collision process the scattering yield and angular distributions have a simple interpretation in terms of a theoretical model.