Higher order correlations in ultracold quantum gases

One of the seminal advances in quantum optics was the understanding that a quantised description of ensembles of photons is best characterised by correlation functions. Correlations are also a fundamental property of matter waves, and the single wavefunction that describes a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) is in principle characterised by long range coherence to all orders (i.e. a universal correlation value of unity). Here we measure the higher order correlation properties of ultra-cold matter waves and use them to probe the coherence of the gas.