A New Objective for High Resolution Imaging of Bose - Einstein

A New Objective for High Resolution Imaging of Bose-Einstein Condensates In the framework of this thesis a new imaging system for the measurement of the atomic density distribution in Bose-Einstein condensates has been built and characterized. The achieved optical resolution of 1.1 µm according to the Rayleigh criterion makes it now possible to observe structures on the scale of the so-called 'healing length'. This 'healing length' is a consequence of the interaction between the atoms and gives the typical order of magnitude on which density variations in the condensate occur. A known effect on this scale are dark solitons, being non-dispersive structures in the condensate. In the second part of this thesis an experiment for the generation of dark solitons with the help of a Bose-Einstein Condensate in a double-well potential is presented and first results are discussed.