Nobel Laureate Wolfgang Ketterle – When Freezing Cold is Not Cold Enough!

When freezing cold is not cold enough: New forms of matter near absolute zero temperature

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Why do physicists freeze matter to extremely low temperatures?

Why is it worthwhile to cool to temperatures which are a billion times lower than that of interstellar space?

FLEET is honoured to present a public lecture given by Prof. Wolfgang Ketterle, 2001 Nobel Laureate in Physics and member of FLEET’s International Scientific Advisory Committee. Prof. Ketterle will discuss new forms of matter, which only exist at extremely low temperatures. Low temperatures open a new door to the quantum world where particles behave as waves and “march in lockstep”.

In 1925, Einstein predicted such a new form of matter, the Bose-Einstein condensate, but it was realized only in 1995 in laboratories at Boulder and at MIT. More recently, cold atoms have become a tool to study phenomena of condensed matter physics at huge spatial magnification at densities which are a billion times lower than ordinary materials.

About the Speaker:

Professor Wolfgang Ketterle is a pioneer in the field of Bose-Einstein condensation in dilute atomic gases. His achievement of a Bose-Einstein condensate and fundamental studies of their properties won him a share in the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2001 (together with Eric A. Cornell and Carl E. Wieman). Other highlights of his scientific achievements include the first demonstration of an atom laser, the realisation of molecular condensates and the study of superfluidity in atomic systems.

Ketterle obtained his PhD from the University of Munich in 1986. He undertook postdoctoral work at MPQ and the University of Heidelberg and subsequently joined Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1990. He is currently the John D. MacArthur professor of physics, the director of the Center of Ultracold Atoms, funded by the NSF, and Associate Director of MIT’s Research Laboratory of Electronics.

FLEET is pleased to present Professor Wolfgang’s talk in cooperation with Monash University, Swinburne University of Technology and the Australian Institute of Physics.