Theory of a pumped & damped cw atom laser

Summary form only given. One of the most striking results in the field of Bose-Einstein Condensation (BEC) is the possibility of creating an atom laser, using the trapped condensate as a continuously replenished source of a coherent atomic beam. Prototype atom lasers have already been demonstrated experimentally. One fruitful theoretical description is mean field theory, as fully quantised models cannot yet include essential effects, such as nonlinear atom-atom interactions.