Introduction

Ultracold atoms and molecules are incredibly versatile tools for creating designer science experiments. Their versatility stems from the many forms of precise control that physicists have developed over recent years, including: the use of laser cooling to remove nearly all entropy, the creation of almost arbitrary potential energy landscapes with optical fields, the ability to vastly increase collision rates or turn them down to zero with Feshbach resonances, direct imaging of clouds with single atom resolution, and much more. This exquisite control has opened up a world of new opportunities for learning about fundamental physics as well as simulating complex systems of interest. Our lab harnesses these powerful tools in order to learn about a wide variety of topics in modern science. A recent sample includes:

· Observation of universal, geometric scaling in three-body Efimov states, which play a major role in nuclear physics, in a Li-Cs atomic mixture

· An effective ferromagnetic system in which we can directly observe individual domains

· Recreation in Cs atoms of the Sakharov Oscillations seen in the cosmic microwave background and the large-scale correlations of galaxies

· The quantum critical regime at the vacuum to superfluid quantum phase transition

· In-situ observation of the quantum phase transition from a superfluid to a Mott insulator state of Cs atoms in an optical lattice

Please take a look at our publications page or our two experiment-specific pages (below) for more information.