Free-fall expansion of finite-temperature Bose-Einstein condensed gas in the non Thomas-Fermi regime

We report on our study of the free-fall expansion of a finite-temperature Bose-Einstein condensed cloud of 87Rb. The experiments are performed with a variable total number of atoms while keeping constant the number of atoms in the condensate. The results provide evidence that the BEC dynamics depends on the interaction with thermal fraction. In particular, they provide experimental evidence that thermal cloud compresses the condensate.