Observation of a one-dimensional Tonks-Girardeau gas.

We report the observation of a one-dimensional (1D) Tonks-Girardeau (TG) gas of bosons moving freely in 1D. Although TG gas bosons are strongly interacting, they behave very much like noninteracting fermions. We enter the TG regime with cold rubidium-87 atoms by trapping them with a combination of two light traps. By changing the trap intensities, and hence the atomic interaction strength, the atoms can be made to act either like a Bose-Einstein condensate or like a TG gas. We measure the total 1D energy and the length of the gas. With no free parameters and over a wide range of coupling strengths, our data fit the exact solution for the ground state of a 1D Bose gas.