home
9/3/2010: Welcome party for Shih-Kuang Tung and farewell party for Yunchu. Shih-Kuang, Claire, Yunchu, Cheng, Chen-Lung, Xibo, Arjun, Zhao-Yuan, Ema, Tejin and Harry joined the party held in Leona's.
9/1/2010: Dr. Shih-Kuang Tung from Eric Cornell's group at JILA joined our group as a new postdoc.
8/27/2010: A second party for Nate. Tejin, YunChu, Nate, Cheng, Harry, Zhao-Yuan, Xibo, Arjun, Ema, Shir and her friend joined the party in Cheng's apartment.
8/8/2010: Last day Nate is in Chicago and we organized a small gether-together party for Nate, Edina, Yuju and Cheng at Navy Pier
8/6/2010: Kathy-Anne is moving to Syracuse and a moving pizza party was attended by Cheng, Chen-Lung, YunChu, Zhao-Yuan, Edina, Kathy-Anne and Mitch.
8/2/2010: Nate's farewell party. We preapred a huge party for him in GCIS E123 and thanked him for the inspirations and friendship he offered us in the past 3 years.
7/24/2010: Group BBQ party at the Point Park, see photos here.
7/15~7/20/2010: We organized the 2010 SMART program and invited 10 high school students to visit us and conduct experiments in our department. This program is supported by NSF CAREER and NSF MRSEC.
7/9/2010: Cheng gave an invited talk in the Quantum Simulation Workshop at the Physics and Quantum Infomation Laboratory of the University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China.
7/5/2010: Cheng gave an invited talk at the "4th international symposium on cold atom physics", Zhoushan, China
6/30/2010: Cheng gave an invited ZhongGuanCun forum talk at the Institute of Physics, Chinese Academic of Science, Beijing, China
6/29/2010: Cheng gave a seminar talk in the Physics Department of the Tsinghua Univeristy and a seminar talk in the electronic engineering department of the Peking University, Beijing, China
6/28/2010: Cheng gave an invited talk at the second international conference: Nonlinear Waves-Theory and Applications, Beijing, China
6/25/2010: Shir received the NSF REU fellowship for her summer research.
6/24/2010: Chen-Lung gave a talk at the "Complexity and Disorder at Ultra-low Temperatures" conference in Santa Fe, NW.
6/21/2010: Cheng gave a talk at the "Complexity and Disorder at Ultra-low Temperatures" conference in Santa Fe, NW.
6/14/2010: Shir, Alex, Yun Chu and Tejin began their summer research on droplet, imaging and lattice circuits.
6/11/2010: Farewell party for Ray and Skyler. Skyler, his father, Ray, Nate, Arjun, Peter, Yun Chu, Xibo and Nate joined the party at Chant.
6/14/2010: Cheng gave an invited talk at the "Ultracold Fermi Gas: Superfluidity and Strong-Correlation" workshop in Tokyo, Japan.
6/11/2010: Tejin received the JFI summer research fellowship.
6/9/2010: Cheng gave an invited talk on our lattice experiment in the Aspen Physics workshop
6/3/2010: Chen-Lung gave a talk to his Ph.D. committee reporting his research progress
5/27~5/29/2010: APS DAMOP 2010 meeting in Houston:
5/29: Xibo gave a talk on "Near-equilibrium dynamics of an atomic gas near a quantum phase transition"
5/28: Xibo and Arjun presented two posters in the APS DAMOP meeting
5/28: Nate gave a talk on "Toward Simultaneous Quantum Degeneracy of Cs and Li Atoms" in the APS DAMOP meeting
5/28: Cheng chaired the "Efimov Physics with Ultracold Atoms" session in the APS DAMOP meeting
5/28: Nate gave an invited talk on Fractional Quantum Hall effects in rotating optical lattices in the APS DAMOP meeting.
5/27: Skyler gave an invited talk on "Matched Bichromatic Optical Lattices for Quantum Information Processing with Ultracold Atoms" in the APS DAMOP meeting
5/27: Cheng gave an invited talk on "Quantum Microscopy of Ultracold Atoms in Optical Lattices" in the APS DAMOP meeting.
5/24/2010: Cheng talked about our recent lattice experiments at the DARPA annual meeting
5/17/2010: Yijun started his summer research on droplet.
5/1/2010: Cheng gave an invited talk at the Joint Urbana Chicago Festival
4/26/2010: Cheng gave an AMO seminar talk at the Joint Quantum Institute
4/23/2010: Cheng gave a Friday lecture to the young graduate and undergraduate students.
4/22/2010: Cheng gave a colloquium talk at the Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis
4/9/2010: Cheng introduced the AMO research program at U of Chicago at Univ. of Chicago Physics grad student open house.
4/1/2010: Cheng gave a Physics colloquium talk at IIT (Illinois Institute of Technology)
3/30/2010: Cheng gave a CM/AMO seminar talk at the University of Michigan.
3/23/2010: Farewell party for Kathy-Anne. Kathy-Anne, Mitch, Zhao-Yuan, Emma, Edina, Nate, Peter, Xibo (and his friend), Arjun, Chen-Lung, Skyler and Cheng joined the party in LaoShangHai. See photo here.
3/16~18/2010: Nate, Kathy-Anne, Chen-Lung and Cheng attended the APS March meeting. We presented 3 talks and 2 posters.
3/14/2010: Going away party for Francisco at Cheng's apartment. Kathy-Anne, Mitch, Zhao-Yuan, Emma, Edina, Nate, Peter, Ray and his friend, Xibo, Arjun, Chen-Lung, and Cheng joined the party.
2/16/2010: Nate gave a JFI seminar talk here.
2/6/2010: Going away party for Dennis Lin
2/4/2010: Nate gave a CAMP seminar talk at the Penn State University
1/20/2010: Nate gave a coloquium talk at the University of Notre Dame.
1/4/2010: Prof. Zhao-Yuan Ma joined our group as a visiting scientist.
2009
12/24/2009: Cheng gave a NCTS seminar talk at National Cheng-Kung University.
12/22/2009: Cheng gave a colloquium talk at the National Chung-Hsing University.
12/16/2009: Cheng gave a Theoretical Physics seminar talk and an informal discussion with students at the National Taiwan Univeristy.
12/12/2009: Kathy-Anne and Xibo guided lab tours for the "Physics in a Bang" project.
12/9/2009: Kathy-Anne gave a seminar talk at the Simon-Fraser University.
12/2/2009: Kathy-Anne, Nate and Cheng attended the DARPA phase two kick-off meeting in Miami.
11/24/2009: Cheng visited Colorado School of Mines and gave a colloqouium talk.
11/23/2009: Cheng visited JILA and gave a special colloquium talk.
11/21/2009: We organized "Midwestern Cold Atoms Workshop 2009" and invited 14 experimental groups from 9 institutes in the midwest. About 80 people showed up and gave 13 invited talks, ~20 posters and joined 3 lab tours. The workshop was organized by Kathy-Anne, Nate, Chen-Lung, Xibo, Arjun, Peter, Skyler, Ray, Dennis and Cheng.
11/19/2009: Kathy-Anne gave an IGERT Seminar talk at Northwestern University on "Quantum Computing with Atoms and Ions"
11/11/2009: Invited by Prof. Tilman Esslinger, Cheng gave an invited talk at the "Ab-Initio Modelling of Cold Gases" workshop at ETH in Zurich, Switzerland.
11/09/2009: Invited by Prof. Johannes Denschlag, Cheng visited University of Ulm in Germany and presented a talk on the Cs lattice and LiCs quantum information projects.
10/30/2009: Invited by Prof. Wolfgang Korsch at the Univeristy of Kentucky, Cheng gave a nuclear physics seminar talk on the enhanced sensitivity to the variation of fundamental constants in cold collisions near Feshbach resonances, and a Physics and Astronomy colloquium talk on quantum phase transition and critical dynamics of atoms in optical lattices.
10/28/2009: Invited by Prof. Brian DeMarco, Kathy-Anne gave an QI/AMO seminar talk at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign on "Quantum computing with atoms",
10/28/2009: Invited by Prof. Hartmut Haffner at UC Berkeley, Cheng gave a UC Berekeley AMO Physics seminar talk on our recent experiments on cesium atoms in optical lattices.
10/27/2009: Invited by Erich Mueller, Nate gave a LASSP seminar at Cornell University on our recent works on quantum phase transition of cold atoms in optical lattices.
10/26/2009: First MCAW2009 planning meeting was attended by Cheng, Maria, Kathy-Anne, Chen-Lung, Xibo, Arjun, Kara, Peter, Skyler and Ray.
10/23/2009: In the "Efimov Physics in Ultracold Gases" workshop in Innsbruck, Cheng presented our recent results on three-body recombinations in 2D traps. Prof. V. Efimov also attended this meeting!
10/20/2009: In the "Efimov States in the molecules and nuclei: Theoretical methods and new experiments" workshop in Rome, Cheng presented our recent results on three-body recombinations in 2D traps. Prof. V. Efimov also attended this meeting!
10/9/2009: Invited by Prof. John Ketterson at th Northwestern University and co-sponsored with IGERT, Cheng gave a NW Physics and Astronomy colloquium talk on the in situ imaging of ultracold atoms in optical lattices.
10/8/2009: Cheng gave a UC physics colloquium talk on the observation of Mott insulating domains here (physics department of the University of Chicago).
10/5/2009: Cheng, Kathy-Anne, Xibo and Arjun attended the AFOSR MURI kick-off meeting. Cheng talked about our plan to associate Li and Cs atoms. Kathy-Anne, Xibo and Arjun also had a lab tour at NIST and the Univ. of Maryland.
9/30/2009: Invited by Prof. Kristan Corwin, Kathy-Anne gave an AMO seminar talk on "Quantum Computing with Atoms and Ions" at the Kensas State Univeristy.
9/22~9/23/2009: Cheng visited MIT, Harvard and Univ. of Massachusetts and gave a CUA seminar at MIT and a colloquium talk at UMass.
9/14~9/17/2009: Visiting MPQ in Garching, Munich university, MPI for nuclear physics, and Heidelberg University, Cheng gave 2 presentations at MPQ and Heidelberg Univ. on the lattice experiment and one at MPIK on the preparation of a Cs BEC.
9/6~9/10/2009: Kathy-Anne, Nate and Cheng joined BEC2009 conference in Sant Feliu and presented one talk on Cs in lattices and two posters on Cs and LiCs experiments.
8/20/2009: Our paper "In situ observation of incompressible Mott insulating domains in ultracold atomic gases" is published in Nature. Here are coverages from NSF and Univ. fo Chicago news release.
8/13/2009: Invited by Dr. Michael di Rosa, Cheng presented our work on optical lattices at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
7/20~8/5/2009: Cheng gave an invited talk at ICQFT'09 in Shanghai on 7/20 (invited by Dr. Jian-wei Pan), a seminar and a colloquium talk at Tsinghua Univ. in Beijing on 7/24 and 7/27 (invited by Dr. Hui Zhai), an plenary talk at the 12th Conference of Low Temperature Physics in Qingdao on 7/29 (invited by Dr. Wu-ming Liu) and an invited talk at OCPA6 in Lanzhou on 8/3 (invited by Dr. Tu-Nan Chang). Cheng also visited the institute of Physics, CAS and Peking University in Beijing.
7/15~7/17/2009: Kathy-Anne, Nate and Cheng joined the COCOMO workshop at the Univ. of Colorado in Boulder, Denver. We prepared 2 posters on our Cs and LiCs experiments and Cheng gave a talk on our plan to entangle atoms via cold molecular quantum states.
7/9~7/14/2009:This year our 2009 SMART program invites 12 high school students from Woodlawn High to visit us. The theme of our program this year is "Energy and Environment". We prepared 3 discussion+experiment sessions, two museum tours, one lab tour and a BBQ party for the students. Details are here.
6/30/2009: Cheng gave a talk to the REU (Research Experience for Undergraduates) students on the cold atom research at the University of Chicago.
6/28~7/3/2009: Kathy-Anne and Nate attended the 2009 Gordon conference on atomic physics and presented two posters on our Cs and LiCs projects.
6/22~6/23/2009: Cheng visited Physics Deprt.,University of Waterloo, Perimeter institute and Institute of Quantum Computation at Waterloo, Canada and gave a talk on quantum simulation and computation based on ultracold atoms in optical lattices.
6/18/2009: Pary to celebrate the acceptance of our paper on Mott insulating domains in optical lattices. Chen-Lung, Xibo, Andi, Nate, Kathy-Anne and Cheng decided to go for a drink the German way at the Chicago Brauhaus in Lincoln Park. None got drunk.
6/15/2009: Undergraduate summer research project begins. Skyler Degenkolb and Jia Hong Ray Ng started working in our group.
5/31~6/4/2009: Cheng joined the Aspen workshop on quantum simulation/information processing. He presented a talk on the quantum information processing and organized an informal discussion on 2D BEC.
5/28/2009: Chen-Lung Hung received the Harper Fellowship from the Univ. of Chicago Physical Science Division. This is one of the very high honors for senior graduate students at UC.
5/28/2009: Jia Hong Ray Ng received a Selove Prize for the summer of 2009. He will start his summer project in June.
5/19~5/23/2009: Chen-Lung, Xibo, Andi, Nate, Kathy-Anne and Cheng attended the DAMOP 2009 meeting at the University of Virginia. Nate gave a talk on the visualization of the superfluid-Mott insulatior transition. Kathy-Anne talked about our progress toward quantum information process and presented a poster. Chen-Lung and Xibo also prepared another poster.
5/18~5/19/2009: Kathy-Anne, Nate and Cheng attained the DARPA meeting in Leesburg and Cheng presented results on the optical lattice quantum simulation.
4/23~4/24/2009: Invited by Prof. Lafyatis, Cheng gave an AMO seminar talk on the observation of Mott insulating domains at the Ohio State University. There were many fruitful discussions with Jason Ho, Qi Zhou, Nandini on thermodynamics and quantum criticality in optical lattices.
4/18/2009: Party at Cheng's to celebrate our new paper and Kara's fellowships: Chen-Lung, Xibo, Arjun, Kara, Peter, Katherine, Nate, Kathy-Anne, Mitch, Dennis, Ray, and Cheng had a potluck party at Cheng's place. After the dinner, some of us consumed energy we gained by playing Wii and some by solving puzzles.
4/18/2009: Skyler presented a poster at Northwestern University for the Chicago Area Undergraduate Research Symposium and described optical details of the Li-Cs experiment.. His presentation won the first prize in the mathematics, engineering and physics session.
4/15/2009: Invited by Prof. Ian Low, Cheng gave a talk at the Argonne National Laboratory High Energy Physics Seminar talk on quantum phase transition in optical lattices and its implication in quantum information processing.
4/10/2009: Cheng gave a Friday lecture to first year graduate students.
4/6/2009: Invited by Prof. Thomas, Cheng attinaed the "Nearly Perfect Fluids - from quark-gluon plasma to ultracold-cold atoms" conference at Research Triangle, NC and gave an invited talk on the SF-MI quantum phase transition in optical lattices. Cheng visited Prof. Thomas's group on 4/7/2009.
3/30/2009: Invited by Prof. Hsin-Chia Cheng and Prof. Scalettar at the UC Davis, Cheng gave a colloquium talk on formation and new experiments on ultracold molecules.
3/26/09: Kathy-Anne gave colloquium at the College of Wooster in Ohio on Quantum Computing with atoms and Ions.
3/26/2009: Invited by Prof. Raizen, Cheng visited UT at Austin and gave an AMO seminar talk on the observation of Mott insulating domains and the progress of the LiCs expeirment.
3/24/2009: Invited by Prof. Hulet, Cheng visited Rice University and gave an AMO seminar talk on the observation of Mott insulating domains and the progress of the LiCs experiment.
3/20/2009: As one of the current Hertz Fellows, Peter presented a poster on experimental progress towards quantum information processing using optical lattices at the Hertz Symposium in Santa Clara, CA.
2/7~2/8/2009: Nate, Kathy-Anne, Chen-Lung and Xibo attained the DARPA team meeting at Berkeley and Cheng presented our progress to study the SF-MI quantum phase transition of cesium atoms in optical lattices.
1/17/2009: Cheng gave a planery talk on ultracold molecules in the Third Winter School of Asian CORE Program "Frontiers of Materials, Photo-, and Theoretical Molecular Sciences , which was held in IAMS, Academic Sinica, Taipei.
1/5~1/8/2009: Cheng presented the progress on the Cs lattice projects in the 39th Winter Colloquium on the Physics of Quantum Electronics (PQE-2009), whch was held in Snowbird, Utah
12/16~12/18/2008: Chen-Lung, Xibo, Nate, Kathy-Anne and
Cheng
attained the DARPA meeting in Las Vegas. Cheng presented the progress
on the Cs and LiCs lattice projects.
12/5/2008: Cheng gave a CQSE seminar talk at the National Taiwan
University on "Quantum control and quantum information processing based
on degenerate quantum gases in optical lattices"
10/23/2008: Invited by Prof. Michael Chapman, Cheng gave
a
talk on our CsLi research in the New Laser Scientists
Conference in Rochester
10/21/2008: Chen-Lung Hung gave a talk on our new evaperation method in
the Frontiers in Optics
and Laser Sciences meeting in Rochester
10/18/2008: Dr. Kathy-Anne Brickman's is getting married this weekend!
10/16/2008: Group dinner with Arjun, Kara, Cheng, Chen-Lung, Xibo,
dennis, Nate, Andi and our special guest, Bob Berry.
10/2008: An interview with Cheng on cold atom research provided by the
U. of Chicago Physical Sciences Division INQUIRY newsletter is here
(see page 4).
10/2/2008: Prof.
Mark Raizen visited our group and gave a talk on his recent works
to develop new cooling and trapping schemes on atoms and molecules.
9/30/2008: We achieved lithium-6 MOT and are moving toward combining Li
and Cs.
9/22/2008: Invited by Prof.
Chih-Wei Lai, Cheng gave a seminar talk at the Michigan State
University on our research activities.
9/15/2008: Invited by Prof.
Joseph Thywissen, Cheng gave a seminar talk at the Univeristy of
Toronto on "Quantum universality and quantum control of ultracold atoms
and molecules near Feshbach resonances"
9/3~9/6/2008: Cheng attained the 20th Packard fellow meeting in Park
Ciry, Utah and presented a poster on our Cs and CsLi experiments.
8/31/08-9/5/08: Kathy-Anne attended the Gordon Conference on Quantum
Information Science and presented a poster on our Li-Cs experiment.
8/29~8/31/2008: Cheng Chin attained Dr. Steve Chu's
birthday
celebration symposium: "Frontiers in Laser Cooling, Single-Molecule
Biophysics and Energy Science" and gave a short talk about experiments
on ultracold atoms and molecules.
8/25/2008: Peter Scherpelz joined our group.
8/24/2008: Group BBQ at the Michigan lake. See here.
8/19/2008: Zeeman slower for Li atoms is functional. Li Zeeman
slower will be combined with a Cs 2D MOT to load a 3D MOT of both
species.
7/31~8/5/2008: First S.M.A.R.T. Woodlawn high school outreach program.
Many group members helped, includeing Kathy-Anne, Nate, Arjun, Scott,
Kara, William, Dennis and Cheng. Eileen Sheu, Athena Frost, Van
Bistrow, Dennis Gordon and several REU students also helped greatly.
The outreach ended with a nice BBQ party and is a big success!! Details
are here.
7/31/2008: Cheng won the IUPAP Young Scientist Prize on atomic,
molecular and optical physics, see medal
and certificate.
7/27~8/1/2008: Nate and Cheng attained 2008 ICAP. Cheng gave a
talk on the "Universality in few-body systems". Nate prepared a poster
on the research projects at the Univ. of Chicago.
7/24/2008: Our paper "Accelarating Evaporative Cooling of Atoms into
Bose-Einstein condensation in Optical Traps" is published here.
In this paper we demonstrate a very simple scheme to achieve the first
runaway evaporative cooling in optical traps. The idea is to tilt the
dipole trap in a controled fashion to remove hot atoms. Although atoms
are removed only in one direction, we proved that the evaporation is
effectively 3D and is much more efficient than the conventional
trap-weakening method. This scheme can be applied to any atomic species
with non-zero magnetic moment (UIUC and NIST have confirmed this point
using Rb.) If you cannot access the paper from the above link or have
any question about this scheme, please feel free to contact us.
7/22/2008: Cheng discussed the cold atom research at the U. of Chicago
with the REU students supported by Chicago MRSEC.
7/6~7/10/2008: Cheng gave two invited talks at the Summer School on
Cold Atom Physics and Precision Measurements and one in the third
International Symposium on Cold Atom Physics in Wuhan, China
6/2~6/7/2008: Cheng visited NIST and worked on a few collaborative
projects with R. Grimm, F. Ferlaino, P. Julienne and E. Tiesinga.
6/1~6/2/2008: Annual DARPA grant review meeting.
5/27~5/31/2008: DAMOP meeting
at Penn State University. We presented three talks on few-body physics
and quantum manipulations in optical lattices and Feshbach molecular
state calcatuion (together with P. Julienne and E. Tiesinga) and two
posters.
5/12/2008: Installation of dye laser system
5/7/2008: First meeting on the SMART outreach program
with Mr.
David Epstein
5/1/2008: Prof. William Phillips, who shared the 1997
Nobel
prize in Physics on laser cooling and trapping, visited our group and
gave a colloquium talk as well as two discussion sessions with the
undergraduate and graduate students.
4/7/2008: Joint group meeting with Dr. Zheng-Tian Lu's group from Argonne National Laboratory. Zheng-Tian's student gave a talk on their project to probe violation of time-reversal symmetry by measuring electric dipole moment of ultracold radium atoms. .
4/4/2008: Open house for perspective graduate students.
We
prepared two posters to showcase our Cs BEC and Cs-Li mixture
experiments and gave a presentation on the atomic physics research
programs at the University of Chicago.
4/2/2008: William Sweeney joined our group as an
undergraduate research assistant
4/1/2008: New paper on "Fast, runaway evaporation to
Bose-Einstein condensation in optical traps"
3/10- 15/2008: APS March meeting. Dr. Nathan Gemelke gave a talk on " Investigating Universal Few-body Physics based on Bose-Einstein Condensates of Cesium Atoms in Optical Lattices." Chen-Lung presented a poster on "Bose-Einstein Condensates of Cesium Atoms in Optical Lattices."
3/10/2008:Going away party for Chilean exchange student Mr. Daniel Rivas. Daniel, Kathy-Anne, Arjun, Scott, Xibo and Cheng went to Seven-Ten for dinner.
3/03/2008: Kathy-Anne gives HEP lunch seminar talk on
Quantum
Computing using trapped ions.
1/28/2008: Skyler Degenkolb joined our group as an undergraduate
research assistant
1/7/2008: Kara Lamb joined our group to work on a graduate research
project
1/7/2008: Chilean visiting student Daniel Rivas joined our group
1/12008: Cheng Chin is awarded the NSF CAREER grant on "Few-body
universality study using ultracold atoms in optical lattices" .
12/11/2007: Workshop on "Bose-Einstein
Condensation and Quantized Vortices in Superfluidity and
Superconductivity"
Invited by Prof. Jiangbin Gong, I gave an invited talk at the Institute
for Mathematical Sciences, National University of Singapore. During
this trip, I also met my old colleague at Stanford, Keng-yeow Chuang ,
who is now a professor at the Physice department of NUS.
(Cheng Chin)
12/6/2007: Seminar talk at the National Tsing-Hua
University in Taiwan
Invited by Prof. Ite-Yu, I gave a seminar talk on the "Enhanced
sensitivity to the variation of fundamental constants in
ultracold collisions of atoms and molecules near Feshbach resonances".
(Cheng Chin)
11/19/2007~11/23/2007: Visit NIST at Gaithersburg
I went to NIST and joined Paul Julienne, Eite Tiesinga, Rudolf Grimm to
work on a review paper. (Cheng Chin)
<>11/9/2007: Experiment Progress: Bose-Einstein condensation of cesium atoms, 3D images of BECs
11/3/2007: Midwest Cold Atom Workshop II at the University of Wisconsin, Madison
Invited by Prof. Thad Walker, we (Chen-Lung, Xibo, Arjun, Scott, Kathy-Anne and Cheng) went to Madision to attain the workshop.
10/19/2007: Friday afternoon lecture for first year graduate students.
10/1/2007: Dr. Kathy-Anne Brickman joined our group
Our new postdoc and the first MRSEC postdoc fellow joined us!! Kathy-Anne graduated from the University of Michigan and is an expert in cooling and trapping of atoms and ions and quantum computation. I am very glad we will be working together to start a brand new project.
9/30/2007~10/13/2007: Prof. Serge Haroche from College de France and ENS, Paris visited us.
Prof. Serge Haroche gave a series of lectures, including
10/2: colloquium talk on "Counting Photons Without Detroying Them: An Ideal Measurement of Light"
10/3: undegraduate lecture on "Atom-photon interactions"
10/8: seminar talk on "Exploring the quantum dynamics of atoms and photons in cavities (I)"
10/9: seminar talk on "Exploring the quantum dynamics of atoms and photons in cavities (II)"
10/10: undergraduate lecture on "Manipulating atoms with lasers"
9/14/2007: Going-away party for Robert Berry
9/5/2007~9/8/2007: Packard Fellow Meeting in Monterey
8/19/2007~8/24/2007: Visit NIST at Gaithersburg
I went to NIST and joined Paul Julienne, Eite Tiesinga, Rudolf Grimm to finish up our work on the review paper.
8/17/2007: Going away party for Emily Garza at Seven-Ten
Bob, Ryan, Chen-Lung, Xibo and I joined the party and thanked Emily for her excellent works in our group.
8/6/2007~8/10/2007: Summer School On Experimental Cold Atomic and Molecular Physics
I gave four talks in the summer school at the East China Normal University in Shanghai. I also visited Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Science, Peking University and Tsing Hua university. In Tsing Hua, I visited Prof. Chen Ning Yang (Ph.D. at U. of Chicago, 1948, Nobel Prize in 1957).
7/28/2007: Group dinnner at Buca di Beppo
Vicky, Nate, Arjun, Scott's wife, Scott, Emily, Bob, Ryan, Chen-Lung, Xibo, Dennis and I had an Italian dinner in downtown to welcome new members in the group.
7/19/2007: http://www-news.uchicago.edu/citations/07/070719.chin-wired.html
7/9/2007: Mr. Scott Waitukaitis joined our group for summer research
7/1/2007: Mr. Arjun Sharma joined our group for summer research.
6/21/2007: International Symposium on Molecular Spectroscopy, Columbus
A presentation on the recent progress in ultracold molecules is delievered in this meeting. I am happy to see and talk to Dr. Paul Julienne, Prof. Olivier Dulieu and Prof. Dave deMille.
6/11/2007: REU student: Emily Garza
Ms. Emily joined our group to conduct a REU research project on the control of optical lattices.
6/7/2007: DAMOP, Calgary
I gave two talks on "Enhanced sensitivity to fundamental constants in ultracold atoms and molecules near Feshbach resonances" and "Ultracold molecules: energy structure and scattering length".
6/4/2007: Going away party for Martin Jankowiak and Robert Berry
We went to Seven-Ten at 7pm to have the party for Martin and Bob. Both Martin and Bob have contributed significantly to our project and we wish them have a bright career after they graduate from the University of Chicago.
4/23/2007: Dr. Jamie Kerman visited us
I am more than extremely happy to see Jamie, whom I have worked with for many years. Jamie delivered a talk on "Superconducting NbN-nanowire single photon detector" in our MRSEC special seminar.
4/20/2007: Nathen Gemelke and Edina Sarajlic visited us
I am extremely happy to see Nate and Edina, whom I have known for many years. Nate will join our group as a Grainger postdoc research fellow.
4/16/2007~4/18/2007: Visit NIST at Gaithersburg
I went to NIST and joined Paul Julienne, Eite Tiesinga, Rudolf Grimm to finish up our work on the review paper.
4/13/2007: Visit Northwestern University
Invited by Prof. Anupam Garg, I visited the Physics Deparment of Northwestern University and presented a colloquium talk on our cold atom research. I had a great time discussing some new ideas with Anupam, Dr. Jih-Chiang Tsai, Prof. Hui Cao, Prof. William Halperin, Prof. John Ketterson...
4/6/2007: Open House and lab tour
In the open house, I introduced the experimental research programs at UC on atomic physics and hard condensed matter physics to prospective students. We also prepared two lab tours for students who are interested in ultracold atoms and molecules.
2/15/2007: UC press release on the Packard fellowship
1/22/2007: New paper
We performed a precise measurement in Rudi's group at Innsbruck University on the collective excitation frequency and the damping rate in the BEC-BCS (Bose-Einstein condensate to Bardeen Cooper Schreiffer superfluid) crossover regime. Our result supports the quantum Monte Carlo calculation and is consistent with the prediction made by Lee and Yang some 50 years ago.
In simple words, Lee and Yang's calculation suggests that an interacting Bose quantum gas should have a lower compressibility than people expected based on mean-field theory.
1/3/2007~1/9/2007: Visit NIST at Gaithersburg
I am happy to see many people at Gaithersburg, including Paul Julienne, Eite Tiesinga, Carl Williams, Rudolf Grimm, Jabez McClelland, Bill Phillips, Chris Helmerson, Trey Proto, Charles Clark, Yuju Lin, Adam Black... I hope we will finish our project soon.
10/09/2006: HEP seminar
Ed (Bucher) invited me to give a HEP seminar talk on "the enhanced sensitivity on the variation of fundamental constants in cold atoms and molecules near Feshbach resonances".
10/05/2006: Visit Toledo University
Invited by Prof. Bo Gao, I went to Toledo univeristy and gave a talk on cold atom expeirments in the strongly interacting regime. It was nice to meet Bo, whose theory first predicted the bunching of s-, g- and l-wave Feshbach resonances in cesium atoms.
9/30/2006: Going-away party for Selim
From 2 to 6pm, we had a party in my flat for Selim, who has stayed with us for two months. We had a major vegetarian hot pot and special dessert made by Selim. Previous night we also had a group buffet and later we went to a Jazz bar and had a great time. It is great to have Selim with us during the construction of the expeirmnet.
9/28/2006: Moving to CIS building!
We moved into our new laboratories in the CIS (Center for Integrative Science) building today. The new building has passed all the tests on vibrational noise, acoustic noise, temperature and moisture controls. We really look forward to setting up our system in the new lab and can start doing expeirment!
9/03/2006~9/12/2006: The 4th COE sumposium on Physics of Self-Oranization Systems
Invited by Prof. Kurihara and Prof. Terasaki, I gave a talk on degenerate Fermi gases at Waseda university. I also visited Takahashi's Yb and Rb groups in Kyoto University, Katori's precision measurements in optical lattices and Inouye's K-Li mixture experiments in Tokyo University. I gave 4 talks in Japan and had interesting discussions with Prof. Yoji Ohashi and Prof.Ueda. After Japan, I visited Prof. Tsai's group in NCKU, visited Dr. Ho in IAMS, Academic Sinica in Taiwan and gave two talks.
8/29/2006: Going-away party for Shuo Hao in 7-10.
8/27/2006: Assemble the main chamber
With Jeff, Xibo and Selim, we assembled the chamber on Sunday. We are very happy everything went well and it looks really cool.
8/20/2006: Group BBQ
Sunday afternoon... beautiful weather... Chen-Lung, Shuo, Selim, Dennis, other friends of theirs and I went to lakeshore (Michigan lake) and had a summer BBQ party. :)
8/10/2006: Group trip: Chicago White Sox vs. New York Yankee in the US Cellular Field
Dennis, Chen-Lung, Eric, Gilbert (visitor), Bob and I went to the game. White Sox won.
8/8/2006: Prof. Johannes Hecker Denschlag from Innsbruck University visited us
Johannes and his wife Nancy came to Chicago area and I am very happy to meet them and learned more about Johannes' recent exciting results. He gave a talk on "Repulsive atom pairs in an optical lattice" which is fascinating. After his talk, we had an hour-long discussion with Kathy's and mine students.
8/2006~10/2006: Prof. Selim Jochim from Heidelberg University in Germany joins us
I am very glad Selim joins us for 2~3 months and will help us constructing the experiments. I know Selim since 2003 and am very happy he can come here and discuss various ideas with us on cold atoms and moleucles.
8/1/2006~8/3/2006: Policy meeting on Quantum Optics and Cold Atoms in Shanghai
Invited by CAS Shanghai branch, SIOM and ECNU, I attained the meeting to discuss future research on quantum optics and cold atoms in Shanghai. After the meeting, I visited the impressive experiments in ECNU led by Prof. Ma and Prof. Yin.
6/18/2006~6/23/2006: Gordon Research Conference on Correlated Electron Systems
Invited by Prof. Seamus Davis, I went to GRC in Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, MA and gave a talk on "Collective and single particle excitations of a strongly interacting Fermi gas"
6/14/2006~6/16/2006: Meeting on Strong Correlations in Fermi systems,
Invited by Prof. Chris Pethick, I went to Nordita and the Niels Bohr Institute, Copenhagen, Denmark and gave one talk for Rudi on "Precision collective excitation measurements in the BEC-BCS crossover regime" and one on "Pairing Gaps in the BEC-BCS crossover regime".
5/30/2006~6/4/2006: VIST NIST
Rudi and I went to NIST to work on our review paper with Paul Julienne and Eite Tiesinga.
5/25/2006: Our paper (cond-mat/0603607) accepted by Physical Review Letters
This paper shows a new application of cold atoms and molecules. Victor and I found that cold collision properties can be extremely sensitive to the Strong interaction to Electromagnetic interaction ratio. In particular, for cesium atoms near a narrow Feshbach resonance, a small change of the ratio by 1 part per trillion (10^-12) can lead to a 0.1%~10% change in the scattering length.
5/23/2006: Visit Argonne
Invited by Dr. John Schiffer, I gave a talk at Argonne National laboratory on Efimov states.
5/16/2006~5/20/2006: DAMOP meeting
Chen-Lung and I attained the meeting. I presented a talk on the "Energy Structure of Feshbach and Efimov Molecules" and chaired an inivited session on "Ultracold molecules".
5/7/2006: OCPA Outstanding Young Researcher Award.
It is my great honor to receive the OYRA award from the Oversea Chinese Physics Association.
5/4/2006: Prof. Christopher Monroe visited us.
Prof. Monroe from University of Michigan gave a fascinating talk on "Quantum Network and Ion trap quantum computer" in our physics colloquium.
4/23/2006~4/25/2006: Visit Ohio State University
Prof. Jason Ho invited me to give a talk on the Efimov state. I discussed with him, Prof. Eric Braaten, Prof. Greg Lafyatis, Prof. Mohit Randeria, Roberto Diener and Hui Zhang on many interesting topics we can study in the future.
4/13/2006: Prof. Moses Chan visited us.
Prof. Chan gave a fascinating talk "Can Solid be a superfluid?" in our physics colloquium.
4/7/2006: Visit Purdue University
I visited Prof. Jiangping Hu at the Purdue University and gave a talk on the Efimov state. I knew Jiangping since I was a graduate student.
4/3/2006~4/4/2006: Prof. Victor Gurarie visited us.
Prof. Victor Gurarie gave a talk at the JFI colloquium on "Fermi gases with Feshbach resonant interactions". He visited our lab and we had long interesting discussions on future Fermi gas experiments.
3/27/2006: New paper
Prof. Victor Flambaum and I wrote this paper, "Enhancement of variation of fundamental constants in ultracold atom and molecule systems near Feshbach resonances", cond-mat/0603607.
3/20/2006: Dr. Yuh-Lin Wang visited us.
Dr. Yuh Lin Wang is the Director of the Institute of Atomic and Molecular Sciences (IAMS) in Taiwan and is also an alumni of Univ. of Chicago.
3/16/2006: Alfred P. Sloan fellowship
It is my honor to receive the fellowship from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Wendy Zhang also got the fellowship, see here.
3/16/2006: "Evidence for Efimov quantum states" on Nature magazine
When three identical bosons interact, a set of universal three-body bound states are predicted in the quantum threshold regime (meaning at very low temepratures). These states, called Efimov states, were predicted in 1970 and are now evidenced in the Innsbruck expeirment. More details on our paper and the Efimov physics are here.
3/12/2006 ~ 3/17/2006: APS March meeting
I chaired the focus session on "Strongly interacting Fermi gases and BCS-BEC crossover" on 3/13 and gave a contributed talk on "Mean-field model on condensates in the BEC-BCS crossover."
3/8/2006: Discussion with Prof. Wolfgang Ketterle from MIT
Prof. Wolfgang realized Bose-Einstein condensation of sodium atoms in 1995 and won the Nobel prize in 2001. His groups in MIT have been extremely productive over the past decade and today he reported exciting news from his Na, Rb and Li experiments in a special seminar talk. In the afternoon, we had two informal discussion sessions with him. Students from my and Kathy's group have the chance to talk to him and ask him about the technical details of the experiment. We also presented to him the progress of our current research and future research direction. He also visited our laboratory in CIS and the new apparatus we are building with much interest.
3/7/2006: EXPERIMENT PROGRESS: Reference laser control
Reference laser is the most critical laser in our setup which provides the absolute frequency reference for all the other trapping and cooling lasers. After working on this laser for quite some time, we now successfully set up a polarization spectroscopy based on two photo-diodes. Near a hyperfine transition, we observe signal varies dispersively over a range of 40MHz with a signal-to-noise of >200. A stability of ~200kHz is deduced, which is sufficiently small compared to the natural linewidth of 5MHz. Further inprovements are in progress.
3/7/2006: I gave a JFI colloquium talk on ultracold molecules and the Efimov state
Our paper in Nature will be published on 3/16/2006.
3/2/2006: Prof. Gordon Baym from UIUC visited us
One of Prof. Gordon Baym's many interests is on degenerate Fermi gases, in particular, its relevance to quark-gluon plasma. At sufficiently high temperatures, the up quarks and down quarks inside the nucleus or neutron stars are freed and strongly interact with each other via gluon exchange. Since quarks are fermions, this system might be simulated by strongly interacting fermionic atoms. I learned quite a bit from talking to Gordon everytime I meet him. In the afternoon, he gave a colloquium talk about the story of Bohr and Heisenberg, both of them have decisive influence in physics and in "atomic sciences".
2/24/2006~2/27/2006: CIAR UltraCold Matter workshop in Banff, Alberto
Prof. Allan Griffin invited me to the workshop supported by the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. Several Canadian experiment groups, especially the one led by Joseph Thywissen, reported interesting results on degenerate quantum gases. Many invited speakers also showed exciting prospects of cold atom research. I am very glad to meet many old friends here, in particular, Allan, Christopher Salomon, Gora, Jason, Jeff, Florian and Henning. I gave the last talk on the Feshbach molecule structure and the Efimov state on Sunday. In the aftenroon, I went hiking with and talked to Christopher, Kirk, Florian, Henning... Everybody is working on a new project! The second day, 2/27, Tony, Jason, Brian and I took the same flight back to Chicago. The flight was seriously delayed for 4 hours. Among all the anxiously-waiting passengers, four physicists were having a good time chatting.
2/14/2006 and 2/16/2006: Prof. Jun Ye visited us
Prof. Ye from JILA, NIST and Univ. of Colorado leads one of the most productive groups in AMO which conducts SEVERAL ground braking experiments in frequency combs, cooling and trapping cold molecules and atomic frequency standard, to name a few. We are very happy he came here and give two colloquium talks, one at the JFI and one in the physics department. In his talks, he showed the amazing link between the ultra-precise laser spectroscopy to the complex and fast dynamics of molecules. We had very interesting discussions on possible experiments on ultracold alkali atoms and molecules. I think cold molecules will be far more useful than people imagine nowaday.
2/9/2006~2/10/2006: MRSEC site visit
Being part of the Seed Project in the Chicago MRSEC with Kathy' group, our group prepared a poster and a short presentation on our research direction. The director Heinrich Jaeger did a great job to coordinate this site visit. Although very few people came to our poster, I strongly believe research on cold atoms will provide new insights into important issues in many-body systems, condensed matter and possibly material sciencel. The reason is that cold atoms are clean, extremely well characterized, free from impurity, and can be confined to simulate strongly correlated or interacting electroncs in condensed matter, fermions in nano-particles, nucleons in atomic nucleus...
2/2/2006~2/8/2006: Visit NIST and University of Maryland
I am very glad to meet and talk to Paul Julienne, Eite Tiesinga and Rudolf Grimm about our paper. We had discussions for a few days on its structure and how we share the tasks to finish it. At NIST, we visited several exciting experiments of Bill Phillips's on Rb and Na BECs, Jabez's on Er and Carl Williams's on "GHz quantum teleportation". At the university of Maryland, the expeirments on cold plasma, cold atoms and the superconductor-based quantum manipulations are extremely interesting. Rudi gave an impressive talk on strongly interacting Fermi gas and on Efimov state at their new Joint Quantum Institute. In this trip, I am particular happy to see Rudi and Adam Black, who is now a postdoc in Bill's group. Rudi and I went to a pretty good Korean/Japanese restaurant on 2/7 and I am happy to hear from him that all the Innsbruck guys are doing very well.
1/31/2006: CM-AMO Sesminar Talk at the University of Michigan
Prof. Luming Duan and Prof. Michal Zochowski invited me to give a talk on the ultracold molecules and Efimov states. I also visited the labs of Prof. Christopher Monroe and of Georg Raithel. Their experiments on photon-atom entangelement and on quantum gases on the chip are very interesting. I also discussed with Luming on several ideas in Fermi and Bose systems. After the talk, they invited me to a very nice Chinese restaurant. I wish there is also a good Chinese restaurant around U. of Chicago.
1/15/2006~1/21/2006: Aspen Physics Workshop on
Strong Correlations in Ultra-Cold Fermi Systems
I will be attending the first cold atom meeting in
2006 in Aspen. Obvioiusly research on ultracold Fermi gas near
resonances is one of the hottest topics these days. In particular,
Cooper pairing and fermionic superfluidity, universally existing in
degenerate Fermi systems with attratctive interactiions, can now been
investigated with unprecidented details and wide range of parameters. I
look forward to hearing more recent progress on ultracold Fermi and
Bose gases. However, I wish it is not too cold in Aspen...
I have great honor to give a talk in this special meeting to celebrate the 60th Birthday of the Physics Department at National Taiwan University, where I got my Bachelor's degree. In the meeting held by the Chair Prof. Chang, Prof. Hsiung and Prof. Hwang at NTU, I visited my college teachers as well as several alumni, many of them are very successful in academic research, as well as in industry, financing, education and even politics... One of the important figures in Taiwan high-tech industry, Dr. Tsai, received her Ph.D. in the Physics Department of U of C. I gave a talk on the first day, "Bottom-up Quantum Simulation and Synthesis of Complex Objects based on Ultracold Atoms."
11/22/2005 : Prof. Victor Flambaum visited us
I read his paper on effective range theory when I was a student at Stanford! Many years later I had the honor to invite him to give a JFI colloquium talk. His works cover a broad range of physics and so did his talk here. The topic of his talk "Effects of variation of fundamental constants from big bang to atomic clocks" attracted audience from JFI, EFI as well as astronomy and astrophysics center. Victor and I had long discussion in the morning on new experiments we can do with ultracold molecules and molecular condensates. We had several very interesting ideas, which further strengthen my belief that cold molecules will explore a brand new and exotic quantum world not seen by cold atoms. In the afternoon, Victor talked to Jonathan Rosner and Donald York. Tom Witten and I went to dinner with him. BTW, I think he is probably the first speaker who took CTA bus to UC.
11/19/2005 : Midwestern Cold Atom Workshop
Brian deMarco, Zheng-Tian Lu and I organized this workshop and brought together eight experiment groups from UIUC, Ohio State University, University of Michigan, University of Wisconsin, Northwestern University, Western Illinois University, and us at UC to present our research progress. Jeff, Chen-Lung, Selim Jochim (our postdoc candidate) attained the meeting (Bob overslept and missed it!) We also brought a poster on our new apparatus. It was very nice to meet all the local groups working on cold atoms and hear all the interesting results from our neighbors. Hopefully soon we will also get our new experiment running. In the evening, we went to a Chinese restaurant with Tse-Chieh Wet (My old friend at UIUC) and another friend of Selim.
11/16/2005~11/18/2005 : Prof. Vladan Vuletic visited us
I was really happy to see Vladan, and his colloquium talk in the Physics department on "Single photons stored in many entngled atoms" was really enlightening. (Isaac Abella and Bruce Winstein were particularly interested.) I worked with Vladan at Stanford for six years on various projects including optical cooling, Feshbach spectroscopy and BEC on atom chips. I always love discussions with him which are always stimulating and frequently lead to unexpected new ideas. I also benefited from him very much on how to conduct serious and careful experiments, but with wild and unlimited imagination. (Although I never understand how he could just knock on the malfunctioned instruments and bring them back to life.) Now that I am in Chicago, I wish I will have more chance to meet him.
11/11/2005 : 2005 MidWest Regional Meeting on Quantum Gases
Kathy Levin, Brian deMarco, Jason Ho and I are organizing the first regional meeting on ultracold atoms. Together with another four groups led by Tony Leggett, Gordon Baym, Smitha Vishveshwara and Lumin Duan, we will have about 30 people in 8 research groups from four universities in this meeting. The two main goals of this meeting is, first of all, to know all the local groups interested in cold atoms system and second, to seek possible chance to promote local collaboration and to support our interest on the quantum gas research.
11/4/2005~11/6/2005 : Cold Atom Workshop at Taipei
In this workshop organized by Prof. Wen-Chin Wu, I am happy to see friends and works from several groups in Taiwan working on cold atom systems. I am also happy to see Allan Griffin, Stefano Giorgini and Ballagh Rob. I presented two talks on the Fermi gas experiment and the molecule experiment. As I see it, research on cold atoms now diversifies and attracts people in condensed matter, nuclear physics, astrophysics... I hope more groups in Taiwan also find this area interesting. I am particularly happy to see and talk to Prof. Gao from NTU, Prof. Han from NCCU, Prof. Hu from NTU, Prof. Bao from NCCU and Prof. Yang from NTU this time.
10/24/2005~10/26/2005 : Dr Paul Julienne from NIST visited us
I invited Paul Julienne to deliver a JFI colloquium talk on 10/25. The title of his talk is "Scattering Resonances and Molecules in Ultracold Atomic Gases". More information is here . I am very happy to tak to him about our new experiment and ideas. His visit was also very welcomed by our colleagues including Karl Freed, Kathy Levin, Philippe Guyot-Sionnest, Steve Berry, Zheng-Tian Lu and Tom Witten.
9/28/2005 : First Group Meeting
We had the first group meeting at RI 349. Bob talked about his diode laser design, Chen-Lung about general concept of Zeeman slower, Jeff on the new chamber design. Martin will start next week on imaging system and programing.
9/12/2005 ~9 /20/2005 : BEC/degenerate Fermi gas conference, CPS meeting and Shanghai Jiao Tong university visit
Thanks to the invitations from Dr. H.W. Xiong and Prof. J.M. Lee, I will present our recent works on cold molecules and Fermi gases in the BEC/Fermi gas conference, the Chinese physics society meeting and Shanghai Jiao Tong university. I will also meet Jun Ye in Wuhan.
8 /30/2005 : Back to Chicago
My summer visit in Europe was very fruitful and we had important progresses in Innsbruck on the collective behavior of Fermi gases and the Efmov effect. I gave two presentations on a Feshbach model and Efimov physics in the last week. I am very grateful working with Rudi, Christoph, Johannes (also Nancy and Joshua. Congratulations!!), all the hard-working students and Christine. So I wrote...
Subject: Innsbruck, the valley
Date: Mon, 29 Aug 2005 16:55:18 -0500
From: Cheng Chin <cchin@jfi.uchicago.edu>
To: Arbeitsgruppe Grimm <grimm-l@uibk.ac.at>
Dear Hermits,
In many Chinese martial art novels and plays, there is this cliche that the main actor, originally juvenile and unsuccessful, was one day set up by the evil and thrown over the cliff. Fortunately, he/she survived. After a long aimless struggle in the wild, he/she either encountered hermits with incredible KungFu skills or found magic potions in secret caves. Whatever that is, he totally concentrated working on it, which eventually turned him/her into a martial art master. Few years later, one day, he/she became strong enough to leave the valley. Then the real story starts....
Very much did I enjoy these fantasies when I was a kid, but little did I know they still happen in the 21st century.
Because of You, the Chin-ese story can continue.
8/15/2005 ~8 /18/2005 : Paul Julienne from NIST visited us
Paul is visiting us these days and gave a wonderful talk on the
Feshbach molecules at the academic institute. We cooperate on cold
collision studies for 7 years, and there are still so many exciting
things we can talk about every time we meet. We are now discovering
many interesting connections in our approaches to understand the
quantum nature of Feshbach molecules. There are few people like
Paul with whom I can enjoy extensive and unlimited discussions on these
topics.
My first time going to the LT conference. It was great to learn many recent exciting experiments on He and on superconductors. I had a great time discussing many ideas with Tilman, John Thomas, Yoji Ohashi and also had the chance to discuss with Danial Tsui and Doug Osheroff. On my way back, I came across Rudi at the Washington Dullas airport. Interesting.
7/24/2005 ~ 8/10/2005 : Visit Tilman Esslinger's group at ETH, Zurich in Switzland
I am going to visit Tilman's group. Their recent experiments on
Fermi gas in optical lattices are intriguing and I hope I will be able
to learn more from Tilman and his coworkers. Selim Jochim is also in Zurich ... it is very nice talking to Michael, Thomas, Ken,
Henning, Stephan, Thilo... I also met Chih-Wei Lai from NTU Phys.
7/14/2005 ~ 7/16/2005 : School on Quantum Phase Transitions and
Non-Equilibrium Phenomena in Cold Atomic Gases
I gave two talks to mostly theorists in this summer school at the
International Centre for Theoretical Physics. The first one on 7/14 is
more pedagogical, the topic is the quantum nature of Feshbach molecules
and recent experiments on the cold molecules. The second one, on 7/15,
is about collective modes, pairing gap measurements and the mean-field
model of a strongly interacting Fermi gas in the BEC-BCS crossover
regime. I have many stimulating discussions with Jason Ho, Willie
Zwerger, Gora Shlyapnikov, Markus Greiner, Daw-wei Wang... about
possible directions in the near future. Trieste is a
lovely place...
7/8/2005 : Rudi Grimm, my former advisor, won the "Wittgenstein
Prize", a pretigeous academic prize in Austria .
Rudi is one the two recipients of this major prize this year. I am
invited to go the award ceremony in Vienna
together with Johannes Hecker Denschlag, Hanns Christoph Naegerl,
Florian Schreck, Christine Obmascher and Rudi's family. I am very happy
our work on Fermi gas and cold molecules are recognized.
7/4/2005 ~ 7/7/2005 : Telluride workshop on ultracold molecules
I am going back to US to this ultracold molecule workshop in Telluride.
Exactly the same time, Kathy is going from Chicago to Italy . This is pretty crazy, but I really
expect in this conference I can learn more and also discuss with other
participants about our recent interesting observations on ultracold
molecules. They are wild!! I mean the molecules.
6/2005~8/2005: Visit
Innsbruck in Austria and ETH in Switzland
I am returning back to Innsbruck to continue working on both Li and Cs
molecule experiments in Rudi Grimm's group. I also invited Jeff and
Chen-lung to come work in Innsbruck so they will get to know how the top
experiments in cold atoms and molecules are operating. Jeff stayed from
6/4 to 6/24 and Chen-lung 6/19 to 7/19. Apparently, they are having a
much better time in Innsbruck than I expected.
5/29~ 6/1/2005 : Aspen Physics workshop: Ultracold Trapped Atomic Gases
Aspen is beautiful and I had a good time
discussing many issues with the experts in the field of quantum gases.
I presented our recent calculations on a simple Feshbach model and also
the pairing gap experiment. I got to present outdoor and write on the
blackboard, which was fun. Unfortunately, I had to leave earlier to
catch the flight to Innsbruck .
5/17~5/21/2005: Conference:
DAMOP 2005 at Lincohn, Nebraska
I presented our works in Innsbruck: one invitd talk on the pairing gap
measurements in strongly interacting Fermi gases (Friday morning) and
one on cesium ultracold molecules and tetramer bound states (Friday
afternoon). It was very nice to meet many friends and old colleagues of
mine.
5/11/2005 : Experiment Progress: MOT
This evening we got cold atoms in a magneto-optical trap (MOT). To get
MOT, we illuminate thermal atoms with six laser beams together with
a strong magnetic field gradient. The radiation pressure of the
lasers slows down the atomic motion to few ten-millionth of a Kelvin
above aboslute zero. Bob, Dennis and I went to a Greek restaurant to
celebrate!!
4/26/2005 : Experiment Progress: Laser locks
We got
all the lasers locked! These lasers are for cooling and trapping the
alkali atoms we want to investigate. Our next step is to get the atoms
into a magneto-optical trap.
4/17~ 4/21/2005 : Meeting:
Workshop on Strongly Interacting Quantum Gases, Columbus , Ohio
I gave a talk on the creation of exotic ultracold
molecules (G-wave, L-wave and tetramer), and a short presentation on
the mean-field model of BEC-BCS crossover. Many issues on interacting
Fermi gases and few-body systems were extensively discussed.
4/5/2005: Meeting: Workshop on Quantum Analog
Simulation of Quantum Condensed-Matter Model, Arlington, VA
Many exciting and promising prospects to
investigated complex systems based on ultracold atoms in optical
lattices were discussed.
4/1/2005 : Our " Cs2+Cs2=Cs4" paper is published. Here is the UC press release . This work has been in my dream for
many years.
3/29/2005 : I invited Prof. John Thomas from Duke University to give a JFI colloquium talk on the
"High Temperature Superfluidity in Atomic Quantum Gases". He stayed for
two days, and we discussed for many hours together with Kathy and
Qijin. My voice was gone after his visit.
3/18/2005 : John, Bob, Dennis and I are going to move a cesium
apparatus from Stanford to Chicago . It will be some intensive work for
the weekend!
3/10/2005 : Prof. Z.-T. Lu invited me to give a colloquium
talk at the Argonne National Lab. I also visited many exciting
experiments there.
3/3/2005 : I talked in the Physics colloquium on
the pairing gap. I am happy to receive quite a few positive responses.
2/26/2005 : I gave a talk in the BCAM 2005 conference on
"Pairing of fermionic atoms in a strongly interacting quantum gas".
Hope more people will be interested in this field.
2/18/2005 : I gave a Friday talk on my research projects to
first year graduate students. I hope students here will be interested
in this new and exciting field.
2/4/2005 : I gave a talk at the PSROC2005 meeting
on "Pairing of Fermionic Atoms in a Strongly Interacting Quantum Gas"
and met many friends and teachers of mine.
1/17/2005 : My first day at the U. of Chicago . I have two optical tables and two
empty labs at RI. I hope the new labs at IBD will be ready soon.
1/10/2005 : I am going to move to Chicago from Innsbruck this Friday (
01/14/2005 ). The weather
forecast says it can be -20°C. That sounds pretty bad.