Bose-Einstein condensation of cesium

Bose-Einstein condensation of cesium atoms is achieved by evaporative cooling using optical trapping techniques. The ability to tune the interactions between the ultracold atoms by an external magnetic field is crucial to obtain the condensate and offers intriguing features for potential applications. We explore various regimes of condensate self-interaction (attractive, repulsive, and null interaction strength) and demonstrate properties of imploding, exploding, and non-interacting quantum matter.     

Bose-Einstein condensation of potassium atoms by sympathetic cooling

We report on the Bose-Einstein condensation of potassium atoms, whereby quantum degeneracy is achieved by sympathetic cooling with evaporatively cooled rubidium. Because of the rapid thermalization of the two different atoms, the efficiency of the cooling process is high. The ability to achieve condensation by sympathetic cooling with a different species may provide a route to the production of degenerate systems with a larger choice of components.     

Bose-Einstein condensation of microcavity polaritons in a trap

We have created polaritons in a harmonic potential trap analogous to atoms in optical traps. The trap can be loaded by creating polaritons 50 micrometers from its center that are allowed to drift into the trap. When the density of polaritons exceeds a critical threshold, we observe a number of signatures of Bose-Einstein condensation: spectral and spatial narrowing, a peak at zero momentum in the momentum distribution, first-order coherence, and spontaneous linear polarization of the light emission. The polaritons, which are eigenstates of the light-matter system in a microcavity, remain in the strong coupling regime while going through this dynamical phase transition.     

A Bose-Einstein condensate of metastable atoms

We report the realization of a Bose-Einstein condensate of metastable atoms (helium in the lowest triplet state). The excitation energy of each atom with respect to the ground state is 20 electron volts, but inelastic processes that would destroy the sample are suppressed strongly enough in a spin-polarized sample to allow condensation. Our detection scheme takes advantage of the metastability to achieve detection of individual atoms as well as of the decay products of inelastic processes. This detection opens the way toward new studies in mesoscopic quantum statistical physics, as well as in atomic quantum optics.     

Squeezed states in a Bose-Einstein condensate

We report manipulation of the atom number statistics associated with Bose-Einstein condensed atoms confined in an array of weakly linked mesoscopic traps. We used the interference of atoms released from the traps as a sensitive probe of these statistics. By controlling relative strengths of the tunneling rate between traps and atom-atom interactions within each trap, we observed trap states characterized by sub-Poissonian number fluctuations and adiabatic transitions between these number-squeezed states and coherent states of the atom field. The quantum states produced in this work may enable substantial gains in sensitivity for atom interference-based instruments as well as fundamental studies of quantum phase transitions.     

Cavity optomechanics with a Bose-Einstein condensate

Cavity optomechanics studies the coupling between a mechanical oscillator and the electromagnetic field in a cavity. We report on a cavity optomechanical system in which a collective density excitation of a Bose-Einstein condensate serves as the mechanical oscillator coupled to the cavity field. A few photons inside the ultrahigh-finesse cavity trigger strongly driven back-action dynamics, in quantitative agreement with a cavity optomechanical model. We approach the strong coupling regime of cavity optomechanics, where a single excitation of the mechanical oscillator substantially influences the cavity field. The results open up new directions for investigating mechanical oscillators in the quantum regime and the border between classical and quantum physics.     

Observation of vortex lattices in Bose-Einstein condensates

Quantized vortices play a key role in superfluidity and superconductivity. We have observed the formation of highly ordered vortex lattices in a rotating Bose-condensed gas. These triangular lattices contained over 100 vortices with lifetimes of several seconds. Individual vortices persisted up to 40 seconds. The lattices could be generated over a wide range of rotation frequencies and trap geometries, shedding light on the formation process. Our observation of dislocations, irregular structure, and dynamics indicates that gaseous Bose-Einstein condensates may be a model system for the study of vortex matter.     

A continuous source of Bose-Einstein condensed atoms

A continuous source of Bose-Einstein condensed sodium atoms was created by periodically replenishing a condensate held in an optical dipole trap with new condensates delivered using optical tweezers. The source contained more than 1 x 10(6) atoms at all times, raising the possibility of realizing a continuous atom laser.     

Cooling Bose-Einstein condensates below 500 picokelvin

Spin-polarized gaseous Bose-Einstein condensates were confined by a combination of gravitational and magnetic forces. The partially condensed atomic vapors were adiabatically decompressed by weakening the gravito-magnetic trap to a mean frequency of 1hertz, then evaporatively reduced in size to 2500 atoms. This lowered the peak condensate density to 5 x 10(10) atoms per cubic centimeter and cooled the entire cloud in all three dimensions to a kinetic temperature of 450 +/- 80 picokelvin. Such spin-polarized, dilute, and ultracold gases are important for spectroscopy, metrology, and atom optics.     

Josephson junction arrays with Bose-Einstein condensates

We report on the direct observation of an oscillating atomic current in a one-dimensional array of Josephson junctions realized with an atomic Bose-Einstein condensate. The array is created by a laser standing wave, with the condensates trapped in the valleys of the periodic potential and weakly coupled by the interwell barriers. The coherence of multiple tunneling between adjacent wells is continuously probed by atomic interference. The square of the small-amplitude oscillation frequency is proportional to the microscopic tunneling rate of each condensate through the barriers and provides a direct measurement of the Josephson critical current as a function of the intermediate barrier heights. Our superfluid array may allow investigation of phenomena so far inaccessible to superconducting Josephson junctions and lays a bridge between the condensate dynamics and the physics of discrete nonlinear media.     

Direct measurement of long-range third-order coherence in Bose-Einstein condensates

A major advance in understanding the behavior of light was to describe the coherence of a light source by using correlation functions that define the spatio-temporal relationship between pairs and larger groups of photons. Correlations are also a fundamental property of matter. We performed simultaneous measurement of the second- and third-order correlation functions for atoms. Atom bunching in the arrival time for pairs and triplets of thermal atoms just above the Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) temperature was observed. At lower temperatures, we demonstrated conclusively the long-range coherence of the BEC for correlation functions to third order, which supports the prediction that like coherent light, a BEC possesses long-range coherence to all orders.     

Possible prebiotic condensation of mononucleotides by cyanamide

The condensation of mononucleotides has been carried out in aqueous solution at neutral pH in the presence of cyanamide. Oligodeoxyribonucleotides up to five units have been formed when montmorillonite was present.     

Light scattering to determine the relative phase of two Bose-Einstein condensates

We demonstrated an experimental technique based on stimulated light scattering to continuously sample the relative phase of two spatially separated Bose-Einstein condensates of atoms. The phase measurement process created a relative phase between two condensates with no initial phase relation, read out the phase, and monitored the phase evolution. This technique was used to realize interferometry between two trapped Bose-Einstein condensates without need for splitting or recombining the atom cloud.     

Acyclic stereocontrol through the aldol condensation

For the scientist who wishes to synthesize complex organic compounds, the most difficult problem is often establishing the correct configuration at the various chiral centers as the synthesis is being carried out. In the past decade, there has been an increasing effort to find direct solutions to this problem, which is particularly acute in the synthesis of acyclic and other conformationally flexible molecules. One of the oldest organic reactions, the aldol condensation, is emerging as a powerful tool for use in achieving such stereocontrol.     

Waterlogged molecules

Measurements of vapor pressures over their aqueous solutions indicate that organic compounds show profound differences in hydrophilic character. These differences are of such magnitude as to suggest an important role for changing solvation in determining free energy changes associated with metabolic transformations in water, and in governing structural equilibria of proteins and other large molecules in water. When two or more functional groups are present within the same solute molecule, their combined effects on its free energy of solvation are commonly additive. Striking departures from additivity, observed in certain cases, indicate the existence of special interactions between different parts of a solute molecule and the water that surrounds it. Similar considerations presumably apply to activated intermediates in the interconversion of biological materials.