Zusammenfassung
Albert Einstein's insight that it is impossible to distinguish a local
experiment in a "freely falling elevator" from one in free space
led to the development of the theory of general relativity. The wave
nature of matter manifests itself in a striking way in Bose-Einstein
condensates, where millions of atoms lose their identity and can
be described by a single macroscopic wave function. We combine these
two topics and report the preparation and observation of a Bose-Einstein
condensate during free fall in a 146-meter-tall evacuated drop tower.
During the expansion over 1 second, the atoms form a giant coherent
matter wave that is delocalized on a millimeter scale, which represents
a promising source for matter-wave interferometry to test the universality
of free fall with quantum matter. 10.1126/science.1189164
Nutzer