Lasers and Their Application to the Observation of BoseEinstein Condensates

The first part of this text provides an overview of the physics of lasers and it describes some of the more common types of lasers and their applications. The production of laser light requires the formation of a resonant cavity where stimulated emission of radiation occurs. The light produced in this way is intense, coherent and monochromatic. Applications of lasers include CD/DVD players, laser printers and fiber optic communication devices. While these devices depend largely on the monochromaticity and coherence of the light that lasers produce, other well-known applications, such as laser machining and laser fusion depend on the intensity of laser light.  

The second part of the book describes the phenomenon of Bose–Einstein condensation. These condensates represent a state of matter that exists in some dilute gases at very low temperature as predicted first by Satyendra Nath Bose and Albert Einstein. Bose–Einstein condensates were first observed experimentally in 1995 by Eric Cornell and Carl Wieman at the University of Colorado, and shortly thereafter by Wolfgang Ketterle at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The experimental techniques used to create a Bose–Einstein condensate provide an interesting and unconventional application of lasers: the cooling and confinement of a dilute gas at very low temperature.