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     COLLOQUIUM OF THE COMPUTATIONAL MATERIALS SCIENCE CENTER
   AND THE SCHOOL OF PHYSICS, ASTRONOMY AND COMPUTATIONAL SCIENCES
                       (CSI 898-Sec 001)
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       Atom Lasers in Optical Lattices: The Next Generation 
                   of Coherent Matter Waves 

                         Marcos Rigol
     Department of Physics, Georgetown University, Washington DC

The invention of the first optical lasers more than half a century ago marked
the beginning of the ultimate control over light and lead to an unprecedented
technological revolution. More recently, with the realization of Bose-Einstein
condensation in atomic gases, we are entering an era in which a similar degree
of control over matter waves is being achieved. Much effort has been devoted
to developing techniques for converting the trapped atoms of a Bose-Einstein
condensate into freely propagating coherent matter waves - the so called atom
lasers. Those atom lasers are expected to become constituents in future
scientific and technological devices. In this colloquium, we address the
possibility of gaining unique control over coherent matter waves by enhancing
interactions by means of optical lattices. We show that the free expansion of
strongly interacting bosons in an optical  lattice, starting from an
incoherent Mott insulator, leads to Bose-Einstein condensation at nonzero
momenta. Those momenta can be fully controlled by tuning the lattice
parameters, in turn controlled by optical lasers. Our approaches to studying
those systems combine computational techniques and analytical insights. We
argue that the newly discovered correlated matter waves open unimaginable
possibilities for technological applications and a new generation of lasers.

                      Monday, April 11, 2011
                               4:30 pm
                    Room 301, Research I, Fairfax Campus

Refreshments will be served at 4:15 PM.
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Find the schedule at http://cmasc.gmu.edu/seminar/schedule.html