CANCELED: Herman Z. Cummins Inaugural Lecture: Wolfgang Ketterle, "Superfluid gases near absolute zero temperature"

CANCELED due to weather.  This event will be rescheduled for next spring.

Herman Z. Cummins Inaugural Lecture

Professor Wolfgang Ketterle of MIT (Nobel Prize 2001) will give the

City College Physics Department

Inaugural Cummins Lecture
Thursday November 1, 2012
City College Shepard Hall 95 at 4:00 PM

Title: "Superfluid gases near absolute zero temperature"


Abstract:
What is the benefit of realizing superfluidity in a gas a million times more dilute than air? Such systems consist of well-separated atoms which can be observed and manipulated with the control and precision of atomic physics, and which can be treated with first-principles calculations. One such form of superfluidity occurs when a gas of bosons undergoes Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC). A richer situation is realized with ultracold fermions. Fermions have to form pairs before they can become superfluid. By continuously changing the interaction strength using a scattering resonance we were able to study superfluidity for varying pair size, connecting the BEC limit with the case of BCS Cooper pairs, which are larger than the interatomic spacing. These studies illustrate a new approach to condensed-matter physics where many-body phenomena are realized in dilute atomic gases.

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Please advise Ms Sue Turner (sueturn@sci.ccny.cuny.edu) if you plan to attend. There will be a reception at 3:30 right outside the lecture room in Shepard Hall.