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March 14, 2003

Nobel Winner Addresses “Quantum Weirdness” in Thomas Lecture

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Dr. Carl E. Wieman, 2001 Nobel Laureate in physics and distinguished professor of physics at the University of Colorado, will deliver the annual L. H. Thomas Lecture at 4 p.m. on Monday, March 24, in the auditorium of Dabney Hall on the North Carolina State University campus. Wieman will address “Bose-Einstein Condensation: Quantum Weirdness at the Lowest Temperature in the Universe.”

The lecture, preceded by a reception at 3:30 p.m. in the auditorium lobby, is free and open to the public. It is named for the late Dr. Llewellyn Hilleth Thomas, a professor of physics at NC State, a fellow of the American Physical Society and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Thomas, who joined NC State in 1968, died in 1992.

In 1929, Einstein predicted that a gas would undergo a dramatic transformation at a sufficiently low temperature – now known as Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC). In 1995, Wieman and his colleagues were able to observe this transformation by cooling a gas sample to the unprecedented temperature of less than 100 billionths of a degree above absolute zero. The resulting BEC state is a novel form of matter in which a large number of atoms behave as a single quantum entity, the “superatom.” Wieman will discuss how his team creates BEC, and describe the subsequent research into this important subfield of physics.

Wieman’s work has been recognized with many awards, including the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Prize in Physics; the Davisson-Gerner Prize in Atomic Physics of the American Physical Society; the Lorentz Medal of the Netherlands Royal Academy; and the King Faisal International Prize in Science.

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