Approaching the Heisenberg limit in an atom laser

We present experimental and theoretical results showing the improved beam quality and reduced divergence of an atom laser produced by an optical Raman transition, compared to one produced by an rf transition. We show that Raman outcoupling can eliminate the diverging lens effect that the condensate has on the outcoupled atoms. This substantially improves the beam quality of the atom laser, and the improvement may be greater than a factor of 10 for experiments with tight trapping potentials. We show that Raman outcoupling can produce atom lasers whose quality is only limited by the wave function shape of the condensate that produces them, typically a factor of 1.3 above the Heisenberg limit.