Peter B. Littlewood
Associate Laboratory Director for Physical Sciences and Engineering
U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory
James Franck Institute, University of Chicago
Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge

Abstract:  Macroscopic phase coherence is one of the most remarkable manifestaions of quantum mechanics, yet it seems to be the inevitable ground state of interacting many-body systems. In the last two decades, the familiar examples of superfluid He and conventional superconductors have been joined by exotic and high temperature superconductors, ultra-cold atomic gases, both bosonic and fermionic, and recently systems of excitons, magnons, and exciton-photon superpositions called polaritons, the subject of this talk.

Engineering of optical microcavities make use of the mixing of electronic excitations with photons to create a composite boson called a polariton that has a very light mass, and recent experiments provide good evidence for a high-temperature Bose condensate. Polariton systems also offer an opportunity to use optical pumping to study quantum dynamics of a many body system outside equilibrium, in a new kind of cold atom laboratory.

Please post the attached flyer in your departments. All interested individuals are invited to attend.

Sponsored by the Department of Physics and cSEND