Ultra Cold Atoms
Since the 80’s, laser cooling has enabled the production of sub-milliKelvin dilute atomic gases - which can be further cooled to the nanoKelvin regime.
This led to dramatic improvement of atom-based sensing capabilities (clocks, atom interferometers), and to the realization of Bose-Einstein condensates and degenerate Fermi gases. More recently, the ability to load these quantum gases in optical lattices opens new perspectives in simulating rich physics analogous to electrons in condensed matter systems.
In these lectures, we present the key tools and concepts of cold-atom physics: laser cooling and trapping, measurement methods, the quantum statistics of ultracold gases. We also introduce a selection of modern research themes, such as quantum simulation with strongly interacting quantum gases.
- Laser cooling and trapping
- Evaporative cooling
- Ideal Bose and Fermi gases
- Weakly interacting BECs : Gross Pitaevski description
- Quantum gases in optical lattices
- Applications of matter-wave diffraction: quantum gas spectroscopy, atom interferometry
- Controlling the interactions: Feshbach resonances
- Strongly interacting Fermions
Advanced quantum mechanics. Atoms and Photons.
