PD Dr. Axel Pelster
(Univ. Kaiserslautern)

Bose-Einstein Condensates of Atoms and Photons - A Comprehensive Overview

A Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) represents a state of matter of a gas of bosons, where a large fraction of bosons occupy the lowest quantum state, giving rise to a plethora of macroscopic quantum phenomena as, for instance, superfluidity. Despite its prediction already in 1925, a Bose-Einstein condensate of massive bosons was only realized in 1995 with a dilute gas of alkali atoms in a magneto-optical trap, which is cooled to temperatues very close to absolute zero. Furthermore, massless photons were Bose-Einstein condensed at room temperature in 2010 within a dye-filled microcavity. The talk provides a comprehensive overview about both the similarities and the differences of these exciting experiments and the current status of their theoretical description.