General Colloquium:
February 17 - 4:00pm Phys 223
(Coffee at 3:30p.m. in room 242)

Dr. Eric Cornell
University of Colorado

Title: "Bose-Einstein Condensation and Topology"

Abstract:
The density and quantum phase of a sample of Bose-Einstein condensed atoms can be described by an order-parameter field. If the atoms have internal degrees of freedom, the corresponding field becomes higher-dimensional. The topology of such a field becomes counter-intuitive. Our experiments show that a "knot" tied in a spinor condensate can spontaneously "unravel itself". I will demonstrate the application of this principle to the coherent generation of vortices, and discuss the implications for gas-phase superfluidity.

Bio:
Eric Cornell received his B.S. from Stanford University in 1985, and his PhD from MIT in 1990. His doctoral research, with Dave Pritchard, was on precision mass spectroscopy of single trapped molecular ions. Cornell went to JILA in Boulder, Colorado in 1990. Since 1992 he has been a staff scientist with the National Institute of Standards and Technology. He is a Fellow of JILA and Professor Adjoint in the Physics Department of the University of Colorado.

Research interests center around various aspects of ultracold atoms, including Bose Einstein condensation and experiments on atoms guided by optical forces inside hollow glass fibers and by magnetic forces along lithographically patterned wires.

Cornell received the Stratton Award from NIST in 1995, the Carl Zeiss Award in 1996, the Fritz London Prize in 1996, the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers in 1996, the 1997 I.I. Rabi Award, the 1997 King Faisal International Prize for Science, the 1995-96 AAAS Newcomb-Cleveland Prize, the 1997 Alan T. Waterman Award, the Lorentz Medal in 1998, and in 1999 the R. W. Wood Prize and the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Physics.