Official description

The first of the two special-topics courses offered this year on ultracold atoms will have an emphasis on bosons. We begin with a discussion of Bose-Einstein condensation of non-interacting bosons, held in a harmonic trap. We discuss basic experimental techniques, including trapping, evaporative cooling, imaging, and Bragg scattering. With weak interactions, a mean-field treatment leads to the Gross-Pitaevskii equation and Bogoliubov excitations. Time permitting, we will discuss bosons in optical lattices, and under quasi-two-dimensional confinement. Overall, this special topic will allow for an elegant synthesis of optics, atomic physics, statistical mechanics, and field theory.

The course will assume fluency in electromagnetism, quantum mechanics, statistical mechanics, and rudimentary field theory (such as raising and lowering operators). The course will not be based on a textbook, but a good reference is Bose-Einstein condensation in Dilute Gases by Pethick and Smith.