Center for Ultracold Atoms

Massachusetts Institute Of Technology, Cambridge MA

Investigators

Abstract

This award provides infrastructure and research funding for the Center for Ultracold Atoms, a joint effort between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University designed to take advantage of the recent dramatic progress in atom optics on the one hand and in methods for creating coherent atoms on the other to explore opportunities for scientific advances and new technologies that would be difficult to implement within the context of individual investigators working in isolation. The goals of the Center include developing coherent atom sources of unprecedented intensity, devising techniques for manipulating the atoms for scientific and technological applications, developing methods for trapping and cooling new species of atoms, studying surface interactions with coherent atoms, loading atoms into surface waveguide structures, and developing methods for new types of spectroscopy. The Center will reach out to the scientific community with a substantial visitors program that will encourage senior and junior scientists to participate in the research and carry the Center's expertise elsewhere. A companion educational project is also being undertaken with the Museum of Science in Boston and Wellesley College. This project is jointly supported by the Atomic, Molecular, Optical, and Plasma Physics Program, the Condensed Matter Physics Program, and the Office of Multidisciplinary Activities in the Mathematical and Physical Sciences Directorate.