Few-body collisions in a weakly interacting Bose gas

Abstract

This thesis deals with a central theme in sub-Kelvin physics: “cold” collisions and their role in experiments aiming at the achievement of Bose-Einstein condensation in spin-polarized atomic hydrogen gas. Some of the subjects studied pertain primarly to the more traditional high-density experimental scheme including its recent variants, others to low-density experiments involving magnetic traps and other advanced experimental techniques.