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Making, probing and understanding Bose-Einstein condensates

Wolfgang Ketterle, Dallin Durfee, Dan Stamper-Kurn

Published Apr 2, 1999• 251 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The realization of Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) in dilute atomic gases [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] achieved several long-standing goals. First, neutral atoms were cooled into the lowest energy state, thus exerting ultimate control over the motion and position of atoms, limited only by Heisenberg’s uncertainty relation. Second, a coherent macroscopic sample of atoms all occupying the same quantum state was generated,

DOI
10.3254/978-1-61499-225-7-67

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The realization of Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) in dilute atomic gases [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] achieved several long-standing goals. First, neutral atoms were cooled into the lowest energy state, thus exerting ultimate control over the motion and position of atoms, limited only by Heisenberg’s uncertainty relation. Second, a coherent macroscopic sample of atoms all occupying the same quantum state was generated,
The observation of Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) in dilute atomic gases was the realization of many long-standing goals: (1) to cool neutral atoms into the ground state of the system, thus exerting ultimate control over the motion and position of atoms limited only by Heisenberg's uncertainty relation; (2) to generate a coherent sample of atoms all occupying the same quantum state (this was subsequently used to realize an atom laser, a device which generates coherent matter waves); and (3) to create a quantum fluid with properties quite different from the quantum liquids He-3 and He-4. This provides a test-ground for many-body theories of the dilute Bose gas which were developed many decades ago, but never tested experimentally.
The experimental realization in 1995 of Bose–Einstein condensation in dilute atomic gases marked the beginning of a very rapid development in the study of quantum gases. The initial experiments were performed on vapours of rubidium, sodium, and lithium. So far, the atoms 1 H, 7 Li, 23 Na, 39 K, 41 K, 52 Cr, 85 Rb, 87 Rb, 133 Cs, 170 Yb, 174 Yb and 4 He * (the helium atom in an excited state) have been demonstrated to undergo Bose–Einstein condensation. In related developments, atomic Fermi gases have been cooled to well below the degeneracy temperature, and a superfluid state with correlated pairs of fermions has been observed. Also molecules consisting of pairs of fermionic atoms such as 6 Li or 40 K have been observed to undergo Bose–Einstein condensation. Atoms have been put into optical lattices, thereby allowing the study of many-body systems that are realizations of models used in condensed matter physics. Although the gases are very dilute, the atoms can be made to interact strongly, thus providing new challenges for the description of strongly correlated many-body systems. In a period of less than ten years the study of dilute quantum gases has changed from an esoteric topic to an integral part of contemporary physics, with strong ties to molecular, atomic, subatomic and condensed matter physics. The dilute quantum gases differ from ordinary gases, liquids and solids in a number of ways, as we shall now illustrate by giving values of physical quantities.
This chapter presents an overview of the specific experimental tools developed in the field of ultra-cold gases to achieve and probe superfluidity in vapours of bosonic atoms. First, it describes the main cooling techniques: the magneto-optical trap, which brings an atomic vapour from room temperature down to the sub-mK range, and the evaporative cooling scheme, which bridges the gap to the superfluid regime. It then proceeds to the study of interaction effects. It shows that these play a central role in the understanding of both static and dynamic properties of trapped Bose–Einstein condensates (BECs), despite the dilute character of these gases. As a consequence, gaseous BECs and superfluid helium obey the same laws of hydrodynamics and exhibit similar dynamical properties, although their densities differ by several orders of magnitude. The third section is devoted to the coherence properties of gaseous BECs. It shows that, by contrast with liquid helium, specific features of ultra-cold gases make them suitable for a direct probing of the quantum coherence associated with Bose–Einstein condensation. Finally, the possibility of tailoring trapping potentials and realizing low-dimensional systems is discussed, where one or two directions of motion are frozen.