Wolfgang Ketterle helped produce and investigate Bose-Einstein condensation in a dilute sodium gas. Cooling a trapped sample into the quantum-degenerate regime produced a population concentrated in a common low-energy state.
Expansion images distinguished the narrow condensed component from the broader thermal cloud. Subsequent experiments used coherence and collective motion to test how the macroscopic population behaves as a matter wave. His Nobel lecture connects the condensation apparatus with interference experiments and the atom laser.[ref]
Bose-Einstein Condensation in a Gas of Sodium Atoms by K. B. Davis and others. 1995 experiment: cooling and condensed distribution
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Portrait of Wolfgang Ketterle
. Kenneth C. Zirkel (Kzirkel); Brown University symposium, 12 April 2007; revised by the photographer in 2012. CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Source. Articles by others on the same topic
Wolfgang Ketterle is a German physicist known for his significant contributions to the field of atomic physics, particularly in the area of Bose-Einstein condensation. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2001, alongside Eric Cornell and Carl Wieman, for their pioneering work in cooling and trapping atoms using laser light, which ultimately led to the production of Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) in the lab.