@article{2012-spethmann, Abstract = {In this thesis, experiments with an ultracold gas doped with few and single atoms of another species are presented. The techniques to adequately prepare and manipulate an ultracold Rb gas and to dope it with a precisely known number of few Cs atoms are introduced. These techniques allow the time-resolved observation of the sympathetic cooling of initially laser-cooled, cold impurity atoms into the ultracold temperature regime of the Rb buffer gas. During the cooling, the confinement of the impurity atom is enhanced to a reduced volume inside the buffer gas, which increases the interspecies collision rate. By analyzing the cooling process, the interspecies scattering cross section is estimated. The lifetime of the resulting hybrid system is limited by three-body recombination of the impurity atom with atoms of the buffer gas. The atomic resolution of the impurity atom number allows the determination of the lifetime atom-by-atom. Additional information is gained from the precisely known fluctuations of the number of lost impurity atoms. This information is exploited to assign the three-body losses unambiguously to a single loss channel. The interaction of an impurity atom in a quantum-mechanical superposition state with the buffer gas is of special interest for future experiments. First experiments into this direction are presented at the end of the thesis.}, Author = {Spethmann, N.}, Journal = {}, Pages = {}, Title = {{Single impurity atoms immersed in an ultracold gas}}, Volume = {}, Year = {2012} }