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Physics Today

Experimenters Produce New Bose–Einstein Condensate(s) and Possible Puzzles for Theorists

Graham P. Collins

Published Mar 1, 1996• 68 citations
Publisher

Abstract

If the creation of a gaseous Bose–Einstein condensate in Boulder, Colorado, last summer marked the opening of a door to a new world of physics—the realm of wealdy interacting, quantum degenerate atomic gases—then today we have unlocked multiple entrances to that domain. Furthermore, each entrance has a different architecture and looks out across a unique landscape.

DOI
10.1063/1.2807533

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If the creation of a gaseous Bose–Einstein condensate in Boulder, Colorado, last summer marked the opening of a door to a new world of physics—the realm of wealdy interacting, quantum degenerate atomic gases—then today we have unlocked multiple entrances to that domain. Furthermore, each entrance has a different architecture and looks out across a unique landscape.
The Field of ultracold quantum gases is no longer in its infancy. Since the first gaseous Bose–Einstein condensate was formed in 1995, physicists have made an exhaustive study of the many amazing properties of this new state of matter. Similar progress has been made with degenerate Fermigases – the quantum-mechanical cousins of Bose condensates. In addition to being fascinating in their own right, experiments on quantum gases are relevant to many different areas of physics – from atomic clocks and quantum computing to superfluidity and quantum phase transitions.
Bose–Einstein condensates (BECs) were formed five years ago from rubidium-87 and sodium atoms, whose interactions are repulsive. BECs were also formed from lithium-7 atoms, which attract one another. (See the article by Wolfgang Ketterle in PHYSICS TODAY, December 1999, page 30.) Now researchers in Boulder, Colorado, have created a single condensate of rubidium-85 atoms, which can be taken continuously from the repulsive to the attractive regimes. The experimenters can vary the strength of the interaction between the atoms in their condensate by a factor of 100 or more—and even flip its sign—by changing the external magnetic field. The ability to tune the interactions of a condensate opens the door to systematic explorations of atomic behavior in new regimes.
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.)
WHEN the 2001 Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded to Eric Cornell and Carl Wieman from JILA in Boulder, Colorado, and to Wolfgang Ketterle from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, they were recognized for creating and studying Bose–Einstein condensates – dilute gases of atoms that are all in the same quantum state. Their remarkable achievement enabled "quantum gases" to be studied experimentally for the first time, and jump-started new sub-fields of research, including gaseous superfluidity, atom lasers and matter–wave optics.