Friday, September 18, 2009

Do Physics Nobel Laurates like Poetry?

I am reading Professor Wolfgang Ketterle's paper based on lectures taught at Veronna in the Summer of  2006. He writes:

"What occurred in Fermi gases, however, seemed too good to be true: all relaxation mechanisms were dramatically suppressed by the interplay of the Pauli exclusion principle and the large size of the Feshbach molecules. So what we have got is a Hilbert space which consists of atomic levels plus one single molecular level resonantly coupled to two colliding atoms. All other molecular states couple only weakly. As a result, pair condensation and fermionic superfluidity could be realized by simply ramping down the laser power in an optical trap containing  6Li in two hyperfine states at a specific magnetic field, thereby evaporatively cooling the system to the superfluid state. Even in our boldest moments we would not have dared to ask Nature for such an ideal system."

Later on he goes on to write:

   "Our ultimate goal is to control Nature and create and explore new forms of matter. But in the end, it is Nature who sets the rules, and in the case of ultracold fermions, she has been very kind to us."


This is beautiful.

Not just aesthetically pleasing, also useful:

" Finally, almost 100 years after Kamerlingh Onnes, it is not just an accidental coincidence anymore that bosonic and fermionic superfluidity occur at similar temperatures!"

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