Thesis (pdf) - Swinburne University of Technology

Acknowledgements
It is very hard for me to order my acknowledgements as there are so many
people whom I would like to thank. Fortunately, the first address of my thanks
is not a question at all: I would like to thank my supervisor Prof. Peter
Hannaford for all that he has done. Without exaggeration I would like to call
him a luminary, not only as a physicist and especially spectroscopist, but also
as a supervisor who has a keen and generous eye for the needs of all of his
students.
And now it becomes difficult. I will thank location-wise, and start with
Swinburne. Here someone that deserves more thanks than I could count is
Shannon Whitlock. He joined after my first year and worked on the experi-
ment during my stays in Hannover. Without him this experiment would never
have become such a success. I enjoyed working with him, be it in the lab or
discussing the atom interferometer theory. He also proved to be invaluable
during my writing up in Germany, being my eyes in the lab and answering all
the things I forgot to write down and now couldn’t look up quickly. Further-
more I want to thank the project leader of the atom chip experiment Prof.
Andrei Sidorov for his constant endeavours to support me and promote the
experiment. I enjoyed working with him in the lab. Dr. Brenton Hall I would
like to thank for the fun in the lab and the expertise he brought and shared
with us students. Someone who also taught me quite a few tricks in the lab
was David Gough. I want to thank him that he made it possible that I could
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