Last Thursday, a portal to one of the coldest places in the universe was opened at the University when a Physics Nobel Laureate, Wolfgang Ketterle, explained his pioneering research on ultra-cold forms of matter.

Ketterle, a Physics professor at the Massachusetts Institutive of Technology, was the speaker at the University’s fifth annual Ford Motor Company Distinguished Lecture in Physics event. In 2001, Ketterle was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his co-discovery and experiments involving Bose-Einstein condensation.

The original theory for this process was the result of the combined work of physcist Satyendra Bose and Albert Einstein. Expanding on a theory sent to him from Bose, Einstein predicted the existence of the Bose-Einstein Condensate. For seventy years this prediction was left unverified until 1995, which was when Ketterle observed this form matter.

“Without exaggeration these are the coldest matter in the universe,” Ketterle said.

In Bose-Einstein condensation experiments, gases are cooled to a temperature close to absolute zero. “If you go down lower and lower in temperature, particles slow down and eventually lose all their energy and that is called absolute zero,” he added.

As a result of this cold environment, the gas atoms have very little energy left and they form a “condensate,” Ketterle said. In this type of condensate, different from the ordinary condensation that gas undergoes when forming a liquid, the atoms no longer vibrate independently, but rather act in unison.

At higher temperatures, atoms can be thought of as an unorganized platoon of soldiers each marching to different beats. When the temperature is lowered to form a Bose-Einstein condensate, the atoms behave as a platoon marching in unison. At this point the individual soldiers – or atoms – are indistinguishable and act like a wave rather than individual particles.

Ketterle’s Nobel Prize-winning work included observing this wave nature by making two Bose-Einstein condensates overlap. When the two Bose-Einstein condensates overlap, they interfere to produce a characteristic set of peaks and valleys or “interference pattern.” This is similar to what is observed when two sets of water waves run into each other — or the effect seen when throwing two stones into a pond at the same time and watching the ripples propagate.

For decades, scientist thought that it would be impossible to observe Bose-Einstein condensate in the laboratory. Ketterle said, “Bose-Einstein condensation was regarded as an illusive goal. People mentioned that it would be wonderful to get there, but they felt there was no way to push laser cooling to those limits.”

By combining two cooling schemes, Ketterle was able to push these limits and help verify the long-time theoretical prediction that this form of matter existed. This verification has advanced our basic understanding of matter.

“I think the biggest impact is that new knowledge about matter may allow us to engineer new materials, but this is something more in the future,” Ketterle added.

In addition, Ketterle said that studying the interference patterns of condensates could prove useful at measuring gravitational and rotational forces, which may find applications in navigation and geological explorations.

The lectureship was sponsored by an endowment given to the University from the Ford Motor Company. “This gift from Ford ... allows the department to bring in world-class visitors to interact with our students and faculty as well as deliver this public lecture,” said physics department Chair Myron Campbell at the opening of the lecture.

Attending the public lecture were a few hundred students, faculty and associates of the Ford Motor Company who crowded the University’s East Hall.