Current topics in atomic, molecular and optical physics : invited lectures delivered at the Conference on Atomic Molecular and Optical Physics (TC 2005), 13th-15th December, 2005, Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science, Kolkata, India
Ultrafast Dynamics of Nano and Mesoscopic Systems Driven by Asymmetric Electromagnetic Pulses (A Matos-Abiague et al.) Experimenting with Topological States of Bose-Einstein Condensates (C Raman) Pair-Correlation in Bose-Einstein Condensate and Fermi Superfluid of Atomic Gases (B Deb) A Feynman-Kac Path Integral Study of Rb Gas (S Dutta) Quantum Information Transfer in Atom-Photon Interactions in a Cavity (A S Majumder et al.) MRCPA: Theory and Application to Highly Correlating System (K Tanaka) Estimation of Ion Kinetic Energies from Time-of-Flight and Momentum Spectra (B Bapat) Study of Atom-Surface Interaction Using Magnetic Atom Mirror (A K Mohapatra) and other papers.
Ultrafast Dynamics of Nano and Mesoscopic Systems Driven by Asymmetric Electromagnetic Pulses (A Matos-Abiague et al.) Experimenting with Topological States of Bose-Einstein Condensates (C Raman) Pair-Correlation in Bose-Einstein Condensate and Fermi Superfluid of Atomic Gases (B Deb) A Feynman-Kac Path Integral Study of Rb Gas (S Dutta) Quantum Information Transfer in Atom-Photon Interactions in a Cavity (A S Majumder et al.) MRCPA: Theory and Application to Highly Correlating System (K Tanaka) Estimation of Ion Kinetic Energies from Time-of-Flight and Momentum Spectra (B Bapat) Study of Atom-Surface Interaction Using Magnetic Atom Mirror (A K Mohapatra) and other papers.
Collective Phenomena and Long-range Interactions in Ultracold Atoms and Molecules: Quantum Magnetism with Ultracold Molecules (M L Wall, K R A Hazzard and A M Rey) Optical Manipulation of Light Scattering in Cold Atomic Rubidium (R G Olave, A L Win, K Kemp, S J Roof, S Balik, M D Havey, I M Sokolov and D V Kupriyanov) Seeing Spin Dynamics in Atomic Gases (D M Stamper-Kurn) Atom-like Coherent Solid State Systems: Precision Magnetic Sensing and Imaging Using NV-Diamond (R L Walsworth) Entanglement and Quantum Optics with Quantum Dots (A P Burgers, J R Schaibley and D G Steel) Coherent Nanophotonics and Plasmonics: Enhancement of Single-Photon Sources with Metamaterials (M Y Shalaginov, S Bogdanov, V V Vorobyov, A Lagutchev, A V Kildishev, A V Akimov, A Boltasseva and V M Shalaev) Linear Optical Properties of Periodic Hybrid Materials at Oblique Incidence: A Numerical Approach (A Blake and M Sukharev) Fundamental Physics: An Introduction to Boson-Sampling (B T Gard, K R Motes, J P Olson, P P Rohde and J P Dowling) New approach to quantum amplification by superradiant emission of radiation (G Shchedrin, Y Rostovtsev, X Zhang and M O Scully) Ultrafast Dynamics in Strong Laser Fields: Circularly Polarized Attosecond Pulses and Molecular Atto-Magnetism (A D Bandrauk and K-J Yuan) Many-Electron Response of Gas-Phase Fullerene Materials to UV and Soft X-ray Photons (H S Chakraborty and M Magrakvelidze) Ultracold Chemistry: Collisions and Reactions in Ultracold Gases (N Balakrishnan and J Hazra)
The experimental realization in 1995 of Bose–Einstein condensation in dilute atomic gases marked the beginning of a very rapid development in the study of quantum gases. The initial experiments were performed on vapours of rubidium, sodium, and lithium. So far, the atoms 1 H, 7 Li, 23 Na, 39 K, 41 K, 52 Cr, 85 Rb, 87 Rb, 133 Cs, 170 Yb, 174 Yb and 4 He * (the helium atom in an excited state) have been demonstrated to undergo Bose–Einstein condensation. In related developments, atomic Fermi gases have been cooled to well below the degeneracy temperature, and a superfluid state with correlated pairs of fermions has been observed. Also molecules consisting of pairs of fermionic atoms such as 6 Li or 40 K have been observed to undergo Bose–Einstein condensation. Atoms have been put into optical lattices, thereby allowing the study of many-body systems that are realizations of models used in condensed matter physics. Although the gases are very dilute, the atoms can be made to interact strongly, thus providing new challenges for the description of strongly correlated many-body systems. In a period of less than ten years the study of dilute quantum gases has changed from an esoteric topic to an integral part of contemporary physics, with strong ties to molecular, atomic, subatomic and condensed matter physics. The dilute quantum gases differ from ordinary gases, liquids and solids in a number of ways, as we shall now illustrate by giving values of physical quantities.
From time to time in physics, single technical achievements have spawned an explosion of research activity and have led to the genesis of entirely new avenues of investigation. Precisely this occurred in the field of quantum gases - the topic of this Focus Issue - following the achievement of Bose-Einstein condensation in a dilute alkali gas in 1995. These experiments built on the foundational work on quantum fluids in dense systems, such as superfluid helium, and the technical achievements of laser cooling in atomic physics. Dilute quantum gases have already proved to be an incredibly fertile ground for exploring a wide range of macroscopic quantum phenomena. The rapid pace of experimental discovery and theoretical advance is evident and every year continues to bring significant achievements. A great advantage is that microscopic observations can be made directly and compared with the predictions of many-body theoretical formulations founded on interaction parameters which are completely determined - something which is not possible in their dense fluid counterparts. This Focus Issue brings together papers which cover many of the topical aspects of quantum gases: optical lattices, quantum degenerate fermions, quantum atom optics, molecular Bose-Einstein condensation, vorticity, and quantum fluctuations in systems of reduced dimensionality. One pervasive theme is the flexibility which arises from the ability to control the interactions, even dynamically if necessary. In quantum gases, this can be effected in two ways, either by changing the internal nature of the pairwise potentials by a Feshbach resonance, or by changing the nature of external potentials in which the atoms are confined and supported against gravity. The external potential may be used to spin gases to high vorticity, imprint on the system a periodic optical lattice potential, or even change the effective dimensionality. Optical lattices are particularly well represented in this Focus Issue. This is where there is the strongest connection with the physics of solids and strongly correlated fluids. Interest in optical lattices is partly due to the recent experimental demonstration that in these systems one can study the quantum phase transition from a Mott insulator, where the atoms are localized to individual sites of the optical potential, to a superfluid phase with long-range order. In contrast to a condensed matter system, the transition can be easily dynamically controlled since it is induced by simply varying the depth of the optical potential. Another area of focused interest is in fermionic gases where there is an ongoing effort, both experimentally and theoretically, to observe and characterize the high-temperature superfluid transition that should occur with enhanced pairwise interactions. If realized, this quantum system would allow experimental investigation of the crossover from Bose-Einstein condensation of dilute weakly-interacting composite bosons to the superconducting-like transition that occurs in a system of weakly interacting fermions. The topics of this Focus Issue represent well the building blocks of quantum gas studies which should allow the exploration of a wide range of macroscopic quantum phenomena in a highly controllable and clean system in which the effects of disorder may be completely absent. Given the recent progress, it will be intriguing to see where this field leads in the future. Focus on Quantum Gases Contents Anisotropic dissipation of superfluid flow in a periodically dressed Bose-Einstein condensate D M Stamper-Kurn Rapidly rotating Bose-Einstein condensates in anharmonic potentials G M Kavoulakis and Gordon Baym Feshbach resonances and collapsing Bose-Einstein condensates J N Milstein, C Menotti and M J Holland Three-body recombination of cold fermionic atoms H Suno, B D Esry and Chris H Greene Bogoliubov spectrum and Bragg spectroscopy of elongated Bose-Einstein condensates C Tozzo and F Dalfovo Quantum atom optics with Bose-Einstein condensates Klaus Mølmer Creation of effective magnetic fields in optical lattices: the Hofstadter butterfly for cold neutral atoms D Jaksch and P Zoller The Josephson frequency of resonantly coupled atomic and molecular condensates R A Duine and H T C Stoof Superfluid current disruption in a chain of weakly coupled Bose–Einstein condensates F S Cataliotti, L Fallani, F Ferlaino, C Fort, P Maddaloni and M Inguscio Bright matter wave solitons in Bose–Einstein condensates K E Strecker, G B Partridge, A G Truscott and R G Hulet Spin dynamics for bosons in an optical lattice Juan José García-Ripoll and Juan Ignacio Cirac Mean field ground state of a spin-1 condensate in a magnetic field Wenxian Zhang, Su Yi and Li You Atom resonant tunnelling through a moving barrier M L Chiofalo, M Artoni and G C La Rocca Local correlations in a strongly interacting one-dimensional Bose gas D M Gangardt and G V Shlyapnikov Shift of the molecular bound state threshold in dense ultracold Fermi gases with Feshbach resonance R Combescot Landau damping in trapped Bose condensed gases B Jackson and E Zaremba An exact reformulation of the Bose–Hubbard model in terms of a stochastic Gutzwiller ansatz Iacopo Carusotto and Yvan Castin Chemical potential standard for atomic Bose–Einstein condensates Sigmund Kohler and Fernando Sols The short-distance first-order correlation function of the interacting one-dimensional Bose gas Maxim Olshanii and Vanja Dunjko The relation between the Gross–Pitaevskii and Bogoliubov descriptions of a dilute Bose gas A J Leggett Superfluidity of Bose–Einstein condensate in an optical lattice: Landau–Zener tunnelling and dynamical instability B Wu and Q Niu Density-optimized efficiency for magneto-optical production of a stable molecular Bose–Einstein condensate Matt Mackie, Anssi Collin, Kalle-Antti Suominen and Juha Javanainen A two-atom picture of coherent atom–molecule quantum beats Bogdan Borca, D Blume and Chris H Greene Superfluid dynamics of a Bose–Einstein condensate in a periodic potential C Menotti, A Smerzi and A Trombettoni Phase diagram of two-component bosons on an optical lattice Ehud Altman, Walter Hofstetter, Eugene Demler and Mikhail D Lukin Murray J Holland University of Colorado at Boulder, USA
The realization of fermionic superfluidity in a dilute gas of atoms, analogous to superconductivity in metals, is a long-standing goal of ultracold gas research. Beyond being a new example of this fascinating quantum phenomenon, fermionic superfluidity in an atomic gas holds the promise of adjustable interactions and the ability to tune continuously from BCS-type superfluidity to Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC). This crossover between BCS superfluidity of correlated atom pairs in momentum space and BEC of local pairs has long been of theoretical interest, motivated in part by the discovery of high Tc superconductors. In atomic Fermi gas experiments superfluidity has not yet been demonstrated; however recent experiments have made remarkable progress toward this goal. Starting from an ultracold Fermi gas experimenters have used Feshbach resonances to reversibly create molecules, i.e. composite bosons consisting of local fermion pairs. Furthermore, the experiments have shown that the resulting diatomic molecules can have surprisingly long lifetimes. Here we report the conversion of a Fermi sea of atoms into a molecular BEC. In addition to being the first molecular condensate in thermal equilibrium, this BEC represents one extreme of the predicted BCS-BEC continuum.