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Science

An Intimate Gathering of Bosons

Keith R. Burnett

Published Jul 14, 1995• 18 citations
Publisher

Abstract

All too frequently we hear the term {open_quotes}Holy Grail{close_quotes} breathlessly invoked to describe one goal or another in science. However, objections can be held back in using this term for the recent experimental achievements at JILA of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the University of Colorado in Boulder, Colorado. Atomic physicists at JILA have been able, using the techniques of laser and evaporative cooling, to put thousands of atoms into the same quantum state. In short, they have observed the phenomenon called Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) in a gas of atoms for the first time. The term Holy Grail seems quite appropriate given the singular importance of this discovery. This article describes the research program, how it was developed and the future possibilities. 8 refs.

DOI
10.1126/science.269.5221.182

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All too frequently we hear the term {open_quotes}Holy Grail{close_quotes} breathlessly invoked to describe one goal or another in science. However, objections can be held back in using this term for the recent experimental achievements at JILA of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the University of Colorado in Boulder, Colorado. Atomic physicists at JILA have been able, using the techniques of laser and evaporative cooling, to put thousands of atoms into the same quantum state. In short, they have observed the phenomenon called Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) in a gas of atoms for the first time. The term Holy Grail seems quite appropriate given the singular importance of this discovery. This article describes the research program, how it was developed and the future possibilities. 8 refs.
Physicists are getting closer and closer to the holy grail of research into ultracold atomic gases – the observation of superfluidity in a Fermi gas. Research groups in Austria and the US have recently taken a major step towards this goal by creating a Bose–Einstein condensate of bosonic molecules from a gas of fermionic atoms. If the atoms can be persuaded to form weakly bound pairs, rather than molecules, physicists hope to learn more about the basic mechanisms responsible for superconductivity.
The phenomenon of Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC), first predicted by Einstein 70 years ago, has finally been observed in the laboratory. In this elusive state of matter the concept of individual particles ceases to have meaning: the atoms condense into the same quantum state and act as a single entity that displays quantum mechanical behaviour on a macroscopic scale. The condensate was observed when Eric Cornell, Carl Wieman and colleagues at the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics in Boulder, Colorado, cooled a dilute gas of rubidium atoms, confined in a magnetic trap, to a temperature of just a few nanoKelvin (M H Anderson et al. 1995 Science 269 198).
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 …
The earliest experiments on gaseous Bose–Einstein condensates established that they are coherent collections of atoms, all described by a single wavefunction—just like the known superfluids, liquid helium-4 and superconductors. It was natural to wonder if they would also exhibit some of the behavior that is so characteristic of those larger-scale Bose condensates, such as quantized circulation (vortices) or frictionless flow. Many theorists have proffered ideas on how one would produce vortices in a Bose–Einsten condensate and what their properties might be. One of those ideas has now been experimentally realized. The approach was suggested by James Williams and Murray Holland of JILA and implemented by their experimental colleagues there. (JILA is a jointly operated lab of the University of Colorado at Boulder and the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Williams is now at the University of Toronto.)
With the prevalence of quantum theory, many physicists have focused on the Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) because it reveals the quantum behavior macroscopically. This article discusses briefly the discovery of BEC and the difficulties to achieve BEC. After that, the general procedures to achieve BEC are introduced while the mechanism of important techniques to accomplish each procedure is illustrated, such as laser cooling, trapping, and evaporative cooling. Besides, the unique physical properties of BEC are introduced in this article. Finally, the possible application of BEC in the field of an atom laser, simulation, and the atomic clock is evaluated.