The Department of Physics and Astronomy cordially invite all to a colloquium talk featuring Dr. Alexander L. Fetter, Department of Physics, Stanford University. Dr. Fetter will present his talk, “Trapped Rotating Bose-Einstein Condensates” on Tuesday, Sept. 29, at 4:10 p.m. in Webster B17.
Meet with our guest speaker and enjoy refreshments before the talk at 3:45-4:10 p.m. in the foyer on floor G above the lecture hall.
Abstract: After reviewing the basic physics of Bose-Einstein condensation, I discuss the non-linear Gross-Pitaevskii equation that provides a good description of a trapped dilute condensate. Here the interest is the rotational properties of the condensate, especially the role of quantized vortex lines. For slow rotations, only a few vortices appear, but as the angular velocity increases, the vortices form a triangular lattice that is analogous to the Abrikosov vortex lattices in type-II superconductors. Eventually the system enters the lowest Landau level regime where the mean interaction energy per particle is small compared to the energy gap separating the first and second Landau levels. For very fast rotations, theorists predict a quantum phase transition to a non-superfluid highly correlated state analogous to those seen in the quantum Hall regime for two-dimensional electrons in a strong magnetic field
