Quantum Institute: Visitor Schedule

The Quantum Lunch is regularly held on Thursdays in the Theoretical Division Conference Room, TA-3, Building 123, Room 121.
For more information, contact Diego Dalvit.
To add your name to the Quantum Lunch email list, contact Charlotte Lehman

Thursday, August 5, 2010
12:30 PM - 2:00 PM

Speaker: Jacopo Sabbatini (University of Queensland)

Technical Host: Wojciech Zurek

TOPIC: Kibble-Zurek mechanism in spin-1/2 Bose-Einstein condensate

Abstract
Since the first experimental realization of multicomponent Bose-Einstein condensates we observed a new variety of properties characteristic of these systems. Two component systems for example can be miscible or immiscible depending on the interaction between the atoms involved. If we consider a binary mixture made of atoms in different hyperfine states we can couple those atoms via a laser producing a spin-1/2 system. The laser can be used to induce and control the phase transition between miscible and immiscible condensates. We use this high control over the state of the system to test the Kibble-Zurek (KZ) mechanism, a universal theory applicable to both classical and quantum phase transition which predicts the number of formed defects given the rate of the transition.