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Physics World

Condensates in a whirl

Published Nov 1, 1999• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Tornadoes, waterspouts and other atmospheric vortices are instanriy recognizable, but a detailed microscopic understanding of these phenomena continues to elude scientists. The same is true of vortices in super-fluids such as helium-4. Superfluids can flow without friction at low temperatures because the helium-4 atoms, which are bosons, all accumulate in the same quantum state, forming a Bose-Einstein condensate. Yet the strong interactions between the helium-4 atoms have hindered in-depth studies of the microscopic nature of superfluidity. Now Eric Cornell, Carl Wieman and co-workers at the JILA laboratory in Boulder, Colorado, have created a vortex in a dilute gas of rubidium-87, another Bose-Einstein condensate (M Matthews et at. 1999 Plys. Rev. Lett. 83 2498).

DOI
10.1088/2058-7058/12/11/3

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Tornadoes, waterspouts and other atmospheric vortices are instanriy recognizable, but a detailed microscopic understanding of these phenomena continues to elude scientists. The same is true of vortices in super-fluids such as helium-4. Superfluids can flow without friction at low temperatures because the helium-4 atoms, which are bosons, all accumulate in the same quantum state, forming a Bose-Einstein condensate. Yet the strong interactions between the helium-4 atoms have hindered in-depth studies of the microscopic nature of superfluidity. Now Eric Cornell, Carl Wieman and co-workers at the JILA laboratory in Boulder, Colorado, have created a vortex in a dilute gas of rubidium-87, another Bose-Einstein condensate (M Matthews et at. 1999 Plys. Rev. Lett. 83 2498).
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.)
Quantum fluids are able to flow past obstacles without creating drag and through channels without any resistance. This superfluidity is a consequence of Bose–Einstein condensation, a process in which all the particles gather in the same, lowest-energy quantum state. At low flow velocities, energy exchanges between the obstacle and the fluid are forbidden because of the twin requirements of energy and momentum conservation. As the flow speed is increased, however, the superfluidity breaks down at some critical velocity above which excitations in the fluid can occur. These excitations can be phonons (i.e. quantized vibrations), vortices or, in the case of superfluid liquid helium, rotons (see Rotons: a low-temperature puzzle by Russell Donnelly Physics World February 1997 p25)
Since the early days of Bose–Einstein condensates (BECs) in atomic gases, comparisons have been drawn to the other familiar bosonic systems: liquid helium-4 and the Cooper pairs of superconductors. Two of the early questions asked of BECs were whether they had similar coherence properties and whether they were superfluids. In He4, it is rather difficult to study properties of the condensate, such as the condensate fraction, whereas the measurement of superfluidity is fairly straightforward. The opposite has proved true for atomic condensates: The condensate fraction as a function of temperature was found early on, but only recently has their superfluidity been placed on firm footing (see PHYSICS TODAY, November 1999, page 17).
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.
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.