Chapter 2 Cold Quantum Gases and Bose-Einstein Condensation

摘要

Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) in cold atomic gases was first achieved experimentally in 1995 [1,6]. After initial failed attempts with spin-polarized atomic hydrogen, the first successful demonstrations of this phenomenon used gases of rubidium and sodium atoms, respectively. Since then there has been a surge of activity in this field, with ingenious experiments putting forth more and more astonishing results about the behavior of matter at very cold temperatures. BEC has now been achieved by more than a dozen different research groups working with gases of different types of atoms. Literally thousands of scientific articles, concerning both theory and experiment, have been published in recent years.