A Bose-Einstein condensate is a phase of matter formed by bosons cooled to temperatures very near to absolute zero. The first such condensate was produced by Eric Cornell and Carl Wieman in 1995 at the University of Colorado at Boulder, using a gas of rubidium atoms cooled to 170 nanokelvins (nK). Under such conditions, a large fraction of the atoms collapse into the lowest quantum state. Bose-Einstein condensate - Introduction. Bose-Einstein condensates are best known to laymen as extremely low temperature ...

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• Bose-Einstein condensate - Introduction
• Bose-Einstein condensate - Theory
• Bose-Einstein condensate - Discovery
• Bose-Einstein condensate - Unusual characteristics
• Bose-Einstein condensate - Current research

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In 1938, Pyotr Kapitsa, John Allen and Don Misener discovered that helium-4 became a new kind of fluid, now known as a superfluid, at temperatures below 2.17 kelvins (K) (lambda point). Superfluid helium has many unusual properties, including zero viscosity (the ability to flow without dissipating energy) and the existence of quantized vortices. It was quickly realized that the superfluidity was due to Bose-Einstein condensation of the helium-4 atoms, which are bosons. In fact, many of the properties of superfluid helium also appear in the g ...

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Bose-Einstein condensate, Bose-Einstein condensate - Introduction, Bose-Einstein condensate - Theory, Bose-Einstein condensate - Discovery, Bose-Einstein condensate - Unusual characteristics, Bose-Einstein condensate - Current research

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The collapse of the atoms into a single quantum state is known as Bose condensation or Bose-Einstein condensation. This phenomenon was predicted in the 1920s by Satyendra Nath Bose and Albert Einstein, based on Bose's work on the statistical mechanics of photons, which was then formalized and generalized by Einstein. The result of the efforts of Bose and Einstein is the concept of a Bose gas, governed by the Bose-Einstein statistics, which describes the statistical distribution of identical particles with integer spin, now know ...

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Bose-Einstein condensate, Bose-Einstein condensate - Introduction, Bose-Einstein condensate - Theory, Bose-Einstein condensate - Discovery, Bose-Einstein condensate - Unusual characteristics, Bose-Einstein condensate - Current research

Read more here: » Bose-Einstein condensate: Encyclopedia II - Bose-Einstein condensate - Theory

Further experimentation by the JILA team in 2000 uncovered a hitherto unknown property of Bose-Einstein condensate. Cornell, Wieman, and their coworkers originally used rubidium-87, an isotope whose atoms naturally repel each other making a more stable condensate. The JILA team instrumentation now had better control over the condensate so experimentation was made on naturally attracting atoms of another rubidium isotope, rubidium-85 (having negative atom-atom scattering length). Through a process called Feshbach resonance involving a ...

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Bose-Einstein condensate, Bose-Einstein condensate - Introduction, Bose-Einstein condensate - Theory, Bose-Einstein condensate - Discovery, Bose-Einstein condensate - Unusual characteristics, Bose-Einstein condensate - Current research

Read more here: » Bose-Einstein condensate: Encyclopedia II - Bose-Einstein condensate - Unusual characteristics

Compared to more commonly-encountered states of matter Bose-Einstein condensates are extremely fragile. The slightest interaction with the outside world can be enough to warm them past the condensation threshold, forming a normal gas and losing their interesting properties. It is likely to be some time before any practical applications are developed. Nevertheless, they have proved to be useful in exploring a wide range of questions in fundamental physics, and the years since the initial discoveries by the JILA and MIT groups have seen ...

See also:

Bose-Einstein condensate, Bose-Einstein condensate - Introduction, Bose-Einstein condensate - Theory, Bose-Einstein condensate - Discovery, Bose-Einstein condensate - Unusual characteristics, Bose-Einstein condensate - Current research

Read more here: » Bose-Einstein condensate: Encyclopedia II - Bose-Einstein condensate - Current research