London
Lecture 2000
WOLFGANG KETTERLE
Massachusetts
Institute of Technology
Fritz
London Award 1999
Nobel
Prize 2000
Bose-Einstein Condensation:
Quantum Mechanics at Zero
Temperature
What happens when a gas is cooled
to absolute zero? A new door to the quantum world opens up because all the
atoms start "marching in lockstep", they
form one giant matter wave - the Bose-Einstein condensate. This was predicted
by Einstein in 1925, but only realized in 1995. Since then, many properties of
this mysterious form of matter have been revealed including matter wave
amplification, miscibility and immiscibility of quantum gases, and sound
propagation. Bose condensates were used to realize a basic atom laser, an
intense source of coherent matter waves. The current focus is to understand the
properties of gases at ultralow temperatures. In the long run, this ultimate
control over atoms might lead to advances in metrology, e.g. more precise
atomic clocks. The talk will link basic concepts of quantum mechanics with
today's research, and discuss the techniques to cool and manipulate matter at nano-kelvin temperatures.