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Science

Bose-Einstein Condensates Display Their First Tricks

Gary Taubes

Published Jun 14, 1996• 1 citation
Publisher

Abstract

A year ago this month, physicists first created a Bose-Einstein condensate, a state of matter in which a cloud of trapped atoms is cooled so close to absolute zero that their quantum-mechanical waves merge. But with barely 1000 atoms in a condensate that lasted just a few seconds, the researchers could do no more than say they'd done it. Now the field is being transformed by a new atom trap that can create condensates of 5 million sodium atoms that survive for half a minute and a new technique for imaging condensates without destroying them. Several research groups are now probing the size, growth rate, optical properties, and even the viscosity of this new form of matter.

DOI
10.1126/science.272.5268.1587

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A year ago this month, physicists first created a Bose-Einstein condensate, a state of matter in which a cloud of trapped atoms is cooled so close to absolute zero that their quantum-mechanical waves merge. But with barely 1000 atoms in a condensate that lasted just a few seconds, the researchers could do no more than say they'd done it. Now the field is being transformed by a new atom trap that can create condensates of 5 million sodium atoms that survive for half a minute and a new technique for imaging condensates without destroying them. Several research groups are now probing the size, growth rate, optical properties, and even the viscosity of this new form of matter.
A Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC), the first of which was shown experimentally 22 years ago, isn’t your garden variety state of matter. It formed at a fraction above absolute zero and only in atoms that act like bosons, one of two types of fundamental particles. Bosons don’t follow the Pauli exclusion principle, which prohibits two particles from existing in the same quantum state. When bosonic atoms are cooled to form a condensate, they can lose their individuality. They behave like one big collective superatom, analogous to how photons become indistinguishable in a laser beam. But it’s even weirder than that. This velocity-distribution data for a gas of rubidium atoms confirmed the discovery of the Bose–Einstein condensate in 1995. In these three snapshots in time, atoms—cooled to near absolute zero—condensed from less dense areas on the left (red, yellow, and green) to very dense areas at the center and the right (blue and white). Image courtesy of NIST/JILA/CU-Boulder. “In a very good analogy, one can view a BEC as a bell, which begins to ring spontaneously when it is cooled below a certain temperature,” writes physicist Nick Proukakis at the Joint Quantum Centre Durham–Newcastle in the United Kingdom, in Universal Themes of Bose–Einstein Condensation , a forthcoming collection of research essays on progress in BECs (1). That behavior provides physicists with an extraordinary opportunity: to study bizarre quantum effects on a large scale, instead of having to probe individual particles. For the last two decades, physicists have treated BECs something like Play-Doh. They poke it, smash it, tickle it with lasers, and trap it in magnetic fields. They mix condensates together to see what happens, and use it to slow down light (2). They have observed strange behaviors that would have been impossible to predict even two decades ago: solids that flow …
Since researchers created the first Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) 3 years ago, they have been eagerly exploring this new state of matter and seeing what can be done with it—turning it into an atom laser, for example (see main text). But the magnetic traps used to confine the condensates put some kinds of studies off limits, because the magnetic fields freeze the spins of the trapped atoms in one orientation. Now Wolfgang Ketterle and his team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have removed the barrier with a new kind of trap.
Research into Bose–Einstein condensation has advanced at a rapid pace since this unique state of matter was first produced in 1995. Now the pace is set to quicken even further with the announcement by three groups of faster and simpler techniques for creating Bose condensates. Physicists at Tübingen University in Germany, and independently at the Ludwig Maximilans University in Munich and the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics in Garching, have formed rubidium condensates in miniaturized traps (amo.phy.gasou.edu/bec.html/popular.html). Meanwhile, a team at the Georgia Institute of Technology has demonstrated an all-optical technique for producing condensates (Phys. Rev. Lett. 2001 87 010404).
Since Feynman's realization of using quantum systems to investigate quantum dynamics, interest in creating controllable quantum systems to simulate condensed matter phenomenon has been high. With the realization of BECs in 1995, the realization of a relatively clean testbed for simulating some of these phenomenon became a reality. \n My PhD research has been an exploration of the production and use of Bose-Einstein Condensates for the study of superfluidity. The first 3 years have been spent in the actual building of a Na BEC apparatus. During this time, we’ve implemented a distinct technique to trap ultra cold Na atoms, i.e. the Optically Plugged Trap. In the process, we have shown how atoms in a linear trap can show spin metastability and thus maintain a nonequilibrium state for long periods of time.\n In studying the interaction of ultra-cold atoms with light, we have developed a technique to measure the velocity distribution of atoms using a standing optical wave (Bragg Spectroscopy). Alongside this, we have also created optical traps for atoms in which we can change to shape of the trap itself to probe different condensed matter systems. The eventual goal being the investigation of condensed matter physics, specifically superfluidity, using ultra-cold atoms.