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Quantum encounters of the cold kind

Nature volume 416, pages 225–232 (2002)Cite this article

Abstract

Since the introduction of laser-cooling techniques for neutral atoms in the early 1980s, the study of collisional interactions between atoms and molecules has been extended to the regime of ultracold temperatures. With nanokelvin temperatures now attainable, our ability to probe the interactions, both experimentally and theoretically, has also progressed. Understanding of the subtle and often highly quantum-mechanical effects that are manifest at such low energies has advanced to the point where new precision measurements are matched by highly accurate theoretical calculations. Low-energy phenomena such as Bose–Einstein condensation and the photoassociation of atoms into bound molecules are now accurately described with no free parameters.

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Figure 1: Overview of neutral atomic and molecular cooling and trapping.
Figure 2: A heuristic argument for understanding why scattering length controls the energetics of particle interactions in a cold quantum gas.
Figure 3: The nature of photoassociation.
Figure 4: Schematic description of two-colour formation of molecules in their ground electronic state by Raman photoassociation.
Figure 5: The nature of threshold scattering with a tuneable resonance level.
Figure 6: Comparison of experimental and theoretical collisional spectra of cooled and trapped Cs atoms at a temperature of a few microkelvin (refs 22,23; and S. Chu, private communication, 2001).

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the US Office of Naval Research, the EPSRC and the EU.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, University of Oxford, Clarendon Laboratory, Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3PU, UK

    Keith Burnett

  2. Atomic Physics Division, 100 Bureau Drive, MS 8423

    Paul S. Julienne, Paul D. Lett, Eite Tiesinga & Carl J. Williams

  3. National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, 20899-8423, Maryland, USA

    Paul S. Julienne, Paul D. Lett, Eite Tiesinga & Carl J. Williams

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Correspondence to Paul S. Julienne.

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Burnett, K., Julienne, P., Lett, P. et al. Quantum encounters of the cold kind. Nature 416, 225–232 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1038/416225a

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