The first example of TGs came in 2004 when Paredes and coworkers created an array of such gases using an
optical lattice. In a different experiment, Kinoshita and coworkers observed a strongly correlated 1D Tonks–Girardeau gas. The optical lattice is formed by six intersecting
laser beams, which generate an
interference pattern. The beams are arranged as
standing waves along three
orthogonal directions. This results in an array of
optical dipole traps where
atoms are stored in the
intensity maxima of the interference pattern. The researchers loaded ultracold
rubidium atoms into one-dimensional tubes formed by a two-dimensional lattice (the third standing wave is initially off). This lattice is strong so that the atoms have insufficient energy to
tunnel between neighboring tubes. The interaction is too low for the transition to the TG regime. For that, the third
axis of the lattice is used. It is set to a lower intensity and shorter time than the other two, so that tunneling in this direction is possible. For increasing intensity of the third lattice, atoms in the same lattice well are more and more tightly trapped, which increases the
collisional energy. When the collisional energy becomes much bigger than the tunneling energy, the atoms can still tunnel into empty lattice wells, but not into or across occupied ones. This technique has been used by other researchers to obtain an array of one-dimensional Bose gases in the Tonks-Girardeau regime. However, the fact that an array of gases is observed only allows the measurement of averaged quantities. Moreover, the temperatures and
chemical potential between the different tubes are dispersed, which wash out many effects. For instance, this configuration does not allow probing of system fluctuations. Thus it proved interesting to produce a single Tonks–Girardeau gas. In 2011 one team created a single one-dimensional TG gas by trapping rubidium atoms magnetically in the vicinity of a microstructure. Thibaut Jacqmin
et al. measured density fluctuations in that single strongly interacting gas. Those fluctuations proved to be
sub-Poissonian, as expected for a
Fermi gas. ==See also==