Discrete Scale Invariance in Ultracold Atoms
| Date/Time: | Monday, 06 Apr 2009 from 4:10 pm to 5:10 pm |
| Location: | Physics, Room 3 |
| Phone: | 515-294-5440 |
| Channel: | Colloquium |
| Categories: | Lectures |
In 1970, a Russian physicist named Efimov predicted that a 3-body system consisting of identical bosons with strong short-ranged interactions would display remarkable universal properties at sufficiently low energy. These universal properties are characterized by a discrete scaling symmetry: invariance under changing lengths by a power of 22.7. Thirty-five years went by without any experimental evidence for this phenomenon. However recent experiments with trapped atoms cooled to ultralow temperatures are finally beginning to provide evidence for Efimov physics.