Physics World

A Fermi gas of atoms

Deborah Jin

Published Apr 1, 2002• 9 citations

Abstract

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.

DOI: 10.1088/2058-7058/15/4/36

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