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Physics World

Atoms lose their identity

D. R. Meacher, P. A. Ruprecht

Published Aug 1, 1995• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

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).

DOI
10.1088/2058-7058/8/8/23

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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).
© The Author(s) 2025.Bose-Einstein Condensation is a phenomenon at the heart of many of the past century’s most intriguing and fundamental manifestations, such as superfluidity and superconductivity: it was discovered theoretically some 100 years ago, and unequivocally experimentally demonstrated in the context of weakly-interacting gases 30 years ago. Since then, it has revolutionised our understanding of the collective quantum behaviour of matter. Such a phenomenon manifests itself across all physical scales, from the nuclear and atomic, all the way to the astrophysical, and has paved the way for novel technological applications.
As was shown by Einstein in 1924, Bose-Einstein statistics gives rise to a phase transition in which a macroscopic part of a gaseous state condenses into a phase with ground state properties, offering a unique view on the behavior of matter at zero temperature. From the very start the nature of Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) has provoked statements concerning its relation with respect to superconductivity in electron gases (Einstein 1925) and the superfluidity of liquid helium (London 1938), but this connection is not easily grasped experimentally. Remarkably, although the concept of BEC appears routinely in very different contexts, ranging from excitons in semiconductors to nuclear matter, it had never been observed in its pure form, i.e., in a gaseous phase, until in 1995 BEC in ultracold Rb vapor was reported by Cornell and Wieman. Bose-Einstein condensation is probably the most exciting phenomenon currently under experimental investigation in ultracold atomic gases. In the tutorial the physics will be addressed which is at the roots of the current interest of BEC in atomic gases.
Bose-Einstein Condensation is a phenomenon at the heart of many of the past century's most intriguing and fundamental manifestations, such as superfluidity and superconductivity: it was discovered theoretically some 100 years ago, and unequivocally experimentally demonstrated in the context of weakly-interacting gases 30 years ago. Since then, it has revolutionised our understanding of the collective quantum behaviour of matter. Such a phenomenon manifests itself across all physical scales, from the nuclear and atomic, all the way to the astrophysical, and has paved the way for novel technological applications.
At 10.54 a.m. on Monday 5 June 1995 a group of physicists at the JILA laboratory in Boulder, Colorado, created something that had never been seen before – a Bose – Einstein condensate made of atoms. Eric Cornell, Carl Wieman and colleagues had made a new state of matter by cooling a gas of rubidium-87 atoms to a temperature of just 170 nK. This was so cold that the de Broglie wavelength of the atoms was comparable with the distance between them, causing the atoms to condense into the same quantum ground state. The breakthrough in Boulder kick-started an intense period of research into the properties of ultracold atoms that continues to this day, and has implications for topics as diverse as super-fluidity and the early universe.
Everyone likes a bargain, and what could be better than two for the price of one? That's what researchers in Boulder, Colorado, must have figured when they snared not just one but two spin states of the rubidium atom in an ultracold trap and simultaneously formed overlapping Bose–Einstein condensates from them. The feat—accomplished by Eric Cornell, Carl Wieman and their colleagues at JILA, the University of Colorado and the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder—gives a valuable tool to those interested in atomic collisions and their dependence on spin states, as well as to those interested in further exploration of interactions between and within condensates. As William Phillips of NIST in Gaithersburg, Maryland, points out, such a double condensate, of two different internal states of the same atom, is unlike anything seen in superfluid He4, a condensed-matter Bose–Einstein condensate.