Fig. 1: Direct imaging scheme and unfolding of the turbulent regime.

a Concept sketch illustrating the imaging working principle. The transversely carved pump beam induces a ground-state change in the atoms located in the outer shells of the cloud. A secondary beam propagating in an orthogonal direction then probes the remaining atoms located in a quasi-2D slab at the centre of the cloud. Typical atom density distributions in both the stable (b) and turbulent (c) regimes.