Many-Body Physics with Ultracold Gases: Lecture Notes of the Les Houches Summer School: Volume 94, July 2010

This book gathers the lecture notes of courses given at the 21 summer school in theoretical physics in Les Houches, France, Session XCIV. Written in a pedagogical style, this volume illustrates how the field of quantum gases has flourished at the interface between atomic physics and quantum optics, condensed matter physics, nuclear and high-energy physics, non-linear physics and quantum information. The physics of correlated atoms in optical lattices is covered from both theoretical and experimental perspectives, including the Bose and Fermi Hubbard models, and the description of the Mott transition. Few-body physics with cold atoms has made spectacular progress and exact solutions for 3-body and 4-body problems have been obtained. The remarkable collisional stability of weakly bound molecules is at the core of the studies of molecular BEC regimes in Fermi gases. Entanglement in quantum many-body systems is introduced and is a key issue for quantum information processing. Rapidly rotating quantum gases and optically induced gauge fields establish a remarkable connection with the fractional quantum Hall effect for electrons in semiconductors. Dipolar quantum gases with long range and anisotropic interaction lead to new quantum degenerate regimes in atoms with large magnetic moments, or electrically aligned polar molecules. Experiments with ultracold fermions show how quantum gases serve as ’’quantum simulators’’ of complex condensed matter systems through measurements of the equation of state. Similarly, the recent observation of Anderson localization of matter waves in a disordered optical potential makes a fruitful link with the behaviour of electrons in disordered systems.

Christophe Salomon is research Director at CNRS and he currently performs his research at Laboratoire Kastler Brossel belonging to the Physics Department of the Ecole Normale Superieure (ENS) in Paris, France.

Leticia F. Cugliandolo is Professor at Universite Pierre et Marie Curie, France. She got her PhD in Physics from Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Argentina, in 1991. Subsequently, she spent a three year post-doc at Universita di Roma I, La Sapienza, and then moved to the Service de Physique de l’Etat Condense at Saclay (CEA) and Ecole Normale Superieure (ENS) de Paris for a second post-doctoral experience. In 1997 she became assistant professor at ENS Paris and in 2003 full professor at Universite Pierre et Marie Curie - Paris VI where she presently teaches and pursues her research acivities. Since January 2007 she is the Director of Ecole de Physique des Houches.