Fragmentation and Phase Manipulation Studies of Bose-Einstein Condensates using Computer-Generated Holograms

Computer-generated holograms (CGHs) and diffractive optical elements can be used as tools to manipulate Bose-Einstein condensates with tailored optical fields of arbitrary profiles. Using CGHs designed and created at the College of Optical Sciences, we are investigating phase manipulation and fragmentation dynamics of Bose-Einstein condensates in combined optical and magnetic trapping fields. We will briefly summarize our CGH creation technique and report on the progress of our experiments with Rb-87 Bose-Einstein condensates.