Abstract
We present here the first measurement of the third-order spatial correlation function for atoms, made possible by cooling a metastable helium cloud to create an ultracold thermal ensemble just above the Bose-Einstein condensation point. The resulting large correlation length well exceeds the spatial resolution limit of the single-atom detection system, and enables extension of our earlier temporal measurements to evaluate the third-order correlation function in the spatial plane of the detector. The enhancement of the spatial third-order correlation function above a value of unity demonstrates the presence of spatial three-atom bunching, as expected for an incoherent source.
| Original language | English |
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| Article number | 013042 |
| Journal | New Journal of Physics |
| Volume | 15 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Jan 2013 |