Description:

Title: Quantum behavior of extremely cold atoms

Speaker: Shina Tan, Georgia Tech

Abstract:

To our present knowledge, by far the coldest places in the universe are in the solar system, unless there are aliens that do things better than the mankind. When atomic vapors are cooled to something like a billionth of a degree above absolute zero, things get simplified because the de Broglie wave lengths of atoms are now enormous, and atoms behave like point particles. Using the technique of Feshbach resonance, people can still make them interact with each other strongly. I will discuss some weird quantum behavior of these strongly interacting atoms, focusing on some exact results and the few-body physics. It is not surprising that ultracold atoms are mathematically related to the high energy physics: in both areas one encounters the infamous ultraviolet divergence problems, because of the short-range nature of the interactions. I will introduce a simple technique for dealing with such problems in the context of ultracold atoms.

Host: Anupam Garg

Speaker Schedule

Keywords: Physics, Astronomy, colloquium