Ultracold Quantum Gases

Spring 2008

Ultracold Quantum Gases (3 sw, 5 sp) 18.1.2008-2.5.2008

Lectures

Lectures on fridays 12-14 in D116

Academy research fellow Jani Martikainen
First lecture: Friday, Jan 18.
Last lecture: Friday, May 2^th

Course description

This is an introductory course on the physics of degenerate quantum gases. This field has seen dramatic advances in the past 10 years including two Nobel prizes in physics. This course will focus on the most recent work. Emphasis is on Bose-Einstein condensation, but also fermionic superfluidity will be discussed.

Course evaluation:

Final exam

Lectures/notes

Exercises:

• roughly every second week
• 25 % of the grade
• no special exercise session, return before 16:00 on thursday before the friday lecture

Contents

• Laser cooling

• Thermodynamics of Bose-Einstein condensate

• Cold atom collisions

• Condensate dynamics and Gross-Pitaevskii equation

• Matter wave interference and atom lasers

• Rotating condensates

• Spinor/Multicomponent condensates

• Optical lattices and quantum phasetransitions

• Superfluid fermion gases

Literature

• C. J. Pethick and H. Smith: Bose-Einstein condensation in Dilute Gases (Cambridge University Press 2001)

• Cornell and Wieman Nobel lecture and Ketterle Nobel lecture
• Three Nobel lectures on laser cooling by Phillips, Chu, and Cohen-Tannoudji
  
• Ketterle review article "Making, probing, and understanding Bose-Einstein condensates" from Varenna Summer School 1998
  

• review article, F. Dalfovo, S. Giorgini, L. P. Pitaevskii, and S. Stringari:”Theory of Bose-Einstein condensation in trapped gases”, Review of Modern Physics 71, 463-512 (1999)

• A review focusing on rotating condensates, Alexander Fetter & Anatoly Svidzinsky: “Vortices in a trapped dilute Bose-Einstein condensate” J. Phys.: Condens. Matter v. 13, No 12, p. R135-R194 (2001) also available at http://xxx.lanl.gov the preprint cond-mat/0102003

Last updated: Aug 7, 2007.