Abstract

In room temperature atomic gases, various inequalities are valid (for instance, that the spacing between atoms will be much greater than their deBroglie wavelength) and these inequalities are in turn the foundation for a series of unconscious approximations we call “physical intuition.” Cooling to nano-kelvin temperatures causes a number of “reversals of inequality”, with associated intuition-bending changes in physical behavior. I will discuss techniques for getting to micro and nano-kelvin temperatures, and some of the new science which has arisen as a result, before focusing on the most recent results from our Bose Einstein Condensation experiment.

© 1996 Optical Society of America