Cold Atoms Beyond Atomic Physics
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ATOMIC PHYSICS
Cold Atoms Beyond Atomic Physics Lucas Madeira1
· Vanderlei S. Bagnato1,2
Received: 11 September 2020 / Accepted: 1 October 2020 © Sociedade Brasileira de F´ısica 2020
Abstract In the last 25 years, much progress has been made producing and controlling Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) and degenerate Fermi gases. The advances in trapping, cooling, and tuning the interparticle interactions in these cold atom systems lead to an unprecedented amount of control that one can exert over them. This work aims to show that knowledge acquired studying cold atom systems can be applied to other fields that share similarities and analogies with them, provided that the differences are also known and taken into account. We focus on two specific fields: nuclear physics and statistical optics. The nuclear physics discussion occurs with the BCS-BEC crossover in mind, in which we compare cold Fermi gases with nuclear and neutron matter and nuclei. We connect BECs and atom lasers through both systems’ matter-wave character for the analogy with statistical optics. Finally, we present some challenges that, if solved, would increase our understanding of cold atom systems and, thus, the related areas. Keywords Cold atoms · Atomic physics · Nuclear physics
1 Introduction Much progress has been made producing and controlling Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) [1–3] and degenerate Fermi gases [4, 5] of dilute atomic clouds in the last 25 years [6]. The advances in trapping, cooling, and tuning the interparticle interactions in these cold atom systems make them excellent candidates for studying microscopic interactions due to the amount of control that one can exert over these systems. The physics learned in them could lead to progress in other systems and fields, as long as we can understand the similarities and take into account the differences between them. In this work, we considered two fields that can be related to cold atoms: nuclear physics and statistical optics. First, we start with nuclear physics. The main reason nuclear and atomic physics share many concepts and techniques is because of the short-range character of the
Lucas Madeira
[email protected] 1
Instituto de F´ısica de S˜ao Carlos, Universidade de S˜ao Paulo, CP 369, S˜ao Carlos, S˜ao Paulo, 13560-970, Brazil
2
Hagler Fellow, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843, USA
interactions. If we take a characteristic length unit (for example, the typical interparticle distance) and the mass m, we can construct an energy scale E0 = 2 /(m2 ). Casting all distances in units and all energies in E0 units allows us to focus on the scale-independent differences [7–9]. An important quantity is the number density n multiplied by the scattering length a to the third power, na 3 . A mean field approach yields good results when na 3 1. However, strong correlations appear when na 3 10−1 for atoms with a/ ∼ 100 and nuclei with a/ ∼ 1, provided they are away from resonance. The focus of the comparison is cente
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