WOLFGANG KETTERLE, John D.
MacArthur Professor of Physics; Director, MIT-Harvard Center for Ultracold Atoms; and 2001 Nobel Laureate
Research Interests
Professor Ketterle's research is in atomic physics and laser spectroscopy,
particularly in the area of laser cooling and trapping of neutral
atoms with the goal of exploring new aspects of ultracold atomic
matter. Since the discovery of gaseous Bose-Einstein condensation,
large samples of ultracold atoms at nanokelvin temperatures are
available. His research group uses such samples for various directions
of research. Bose-Einstein condensates are a new quantum fluid.
The interactions among the atoms make them an intriguing novel many-body
system. Aspects of interest are sound, superfluidity, and properties
of miscible and immiscible multi-component condensates. These topics
are interdisciplinary with condensed matter physics.
The coherence properties of the condensate are exploited in the
field of atom optics. Coherent beams of atoms extracted from the
condensate ("atom lasers") are analogous to optical laser beams.
Ketterle's research group has used Bose-Einstein condensates as
amplifiers for light and for atoms. A third direction is precision
measurements. The unprecedented control over the position and velocity
of atoms provided by Bose-Einstein condensates is exploited for
high precision atom interferometry.
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Biographical Sketch
Wolfgang Ketterle received a diploma (equivalent to a master's
degree) from the Technical University of Munich (1982), and a Ph.D.
in Physics from the University of Munich (1986). After postdoctoral
work at the Max-Planck Institute for Quantum Optics in Garching,
Germany, the University of Heidelberg and at MIT, he joined the
physics faculty at MIT (1993), where he is now the John D. MacArthur
Professor of Physics. He does experimental research in atomic physics
and laser spectroscopy and focuses currently on Bose-Einstein condensation
in dilute atomic gases. He was among the first scientists to observe
this phenomenon in 1995, and realized the first atom laser in 1997.
His earlier research was in molecular spectroscopy and combustion
diagnostics.
His awards include a David and Lucile Packard Fellowship (1996),
the Rabi Prize of the American Physical Society (1997), the Gustav-Hertz
Prize of the German Physical Society (1997), the Discover Magazine
Award for Technological Innovation (1998), the Fritz London Prize
in Low Temperature Physics (1999), the Dannie-Heineman Prize of
the Academy of Sciences, Göttingen, Germany (1999), the Benjamin
Franklin Medal in Physics (2000), and the Nobel Prize in Physics
(2001, together with E.A. Cornell and C.E. Wieman).
For additional biographical information on Professor Ketterle,
see his autobiography
written for the Nobel Foundation.
[top] Selected Publications
Please visit the Ketterle
Group Home Page for Professor Ketterle's most recent list of
publications.
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