Physics Frontier Center News

Particles can be classified as bosons or fermions. A defining characteristic of a boson is its ability to pile into a single quantum state with other bosons. Fermions are not allowed to do this. One broad impact of fermionic anti-social behavior is that it allows for carbon-based life forms, like us, to exist. If the universe were solely made from bosons, life would certainly not look like it does. Recently, JQI theorists* have proposed an elegant method for achieving transmutation--that is, making bosons act like fermions.

Sylvain Ravets has recently been awarded the DIM Nano-K prize for his thesis “Development of tools for quantum engineering using individual atoms: optical nanofibers and controlled Rydberg interactions.” Awarded annually by C’Nano IdF (a French organization promoting nanoscience research), the prize recognizes him for “research at the interface between nanosciences and cold atoms.” The DIM Nano-K gathers IFRAF (Île-de-France Cold Atom Research Institute) and C’Nano IdF (centre of

The quantum Hall effect, discovered in the early 1980s, is a phenomenon that was observed in a two-dimensional gas of electrons existing at the interface between two semiconductor layers. Subject to the severe criteria of very high material purity and very low temperatures, the electrons, when under the influence of a large magnetic field, will organize themselves into an ensemble state featuring remarkable properties.

Experimental quantum physics often resides in the coldest regimes found in the universe, where the lack of large thermal disturbances allows quantum effects to flourish. A key ingredient to these experiments is being able to measure just how cold the system of interest is. Laboratories that produce ultracold gas clouds have a simple and reliable method to do this: take pictures! The temperature of a gas depends on the range of velocities among the particles, namely the size of the difference between the slowest- and the fastest-moving particles.