Maurer Lecture by Nobel Winner to Highlight Celebration of Physics Centennial

Wolfgang Ketterle

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – The man who shared a Nobel Prize in physics for causing atoms to “sing in unison” and discovering a new state of matter will speak on campus April 3.

Nobel laureate Wolfgang Ketterle, director of the MIT-Harvard Center for Ultracold Atoms, will give the Centennial Robert Maurer Distinguished Lecture “New Forms of Quantum Matter Near Absolute Zero Temperature” at 7 p.m. Thursday, April 3, in Giffels Auditorium, Old Main. The lecture is free and open to the public.

The lecture is part of a series of events the physics department of the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences has planned to mark its centennial and celebrate the achievements of its faculty, students and alumni.

In his lecture, Ketterle will describe a new form of matter called Bose-Einstein condensate, which exists at temperatures a million times colder than those in the depths of outer space. Bose-Einstein condensation is a state of matter that occurs when atoms are cooled to temperatures near absolute zero. Under such conditions, a large number of particles become locked together in the lowest quantum state of the system. Ketterle was one of the first scientists to observe this phenomenon in 1995.

Light can be corralled into behaving in a certain way; thus a laser beam differs from a light bulb, because in a laser beam the light particles have the same energy and oscillate together. In the Bose-Einstein condensate, Ketterle and his colleagues have been able to achieve the same effect in matter, using atoms instead of light particles. In fact, Ketterle was able to produce a primitive “laser beam” using matter instead of light.

The Robert D. Maurer Distinguished Lecture Series was established in 1995 to honor an alumnus who is often called “the father of optical fiber.” His research into the properties of pure glasses led to the development of optical waveguides, which replace wires with thin glass fibers and electrical current with light pulses. This technology continues to drive telecommunications in the 21^st century.

For information on the lecture and other centennial events, please visit http://www.uark.edu/depts/physics/centennial/index.html to learn more.

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Raj Gupta, professor, department of physics
J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences
(479) 575-5933, rgupta@uark.edu

Melissa Lutz Blouin, director of science and research communications
University Relations
(479) 575-5555, blouin@uark.edu