Turbulence and vortices in two-dimensional Bose gases

该奖项是根据2009年美国复苏和再投资法案（公法111-5）资助的。流体和超流体中的涡旋动力学是许多重要物理现象的核心，包括湍流和超导性的破坏。虽然这种现象的整体特性的成功模型已经产生，详细的微观描述，包括漩涡的作用一直是异常困难的发展。美国国家科学基金会的这一奖项支持旨在通过对玻色-爱因斯坦凝聚体的实验研究来填补这一关键空白的研究。玻色-爱因斯坦凝聚体由数百万个被困在超冷蒸汽中的原子组成，可以在实验室中以微观精度进行操作和检测，并且可以利用原子相互作用和量子力学的微观描述从理论上理解和建模。作为宇宙中已知最冷的物体，稀气冷凝物也作为相干流体，可以用来研究流体和超流体现象，这在1995年首次实验观测之前是不可能的。该研究项目将美国国家科学基金会支持的实验室工作与国际同行的理论努力整合到一个更大的合作研究中，研究湍流物理、相变动力学以及气体超流体中新的涡流产生和操纵机制。这项工作将构建对流体和超流体中涡旋行为、湍流以及相关现象的微观理解这一更大难题中一些最困难的部分拼凑在一起。因此，这项研究的结果有望对物理学作为一门学科的发展，以及在广泛的特定基础和应用物理主题领域产生重大而令人兴奋的广泛影响。通过对涡旋操纵新技术的研究，本研究也将为利用量子级信息处理的潜在未来技术开发实用工具。由于学生的教育当然是联邦资助的研究中最重要的方面之一，因此该项目涉及本科生和研究生；这两个群体的教育是保持国家和国际科技实力的关键。该奖项的大部分用于资助研究生，以便在前沿研究领域教授这些学生最先进的实验技术，以及更广泛地如何进行高质量的独立研究。这些研究生将继承优秀技术的传统，最终融入其他实验室环境，并将适合有效地向未来几代研究生教授研究技能。

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5). Vortex dynamics in fluids and superfluids lie at the hearts of many important phenomena in physics, including turbulence and the breakdown of superconductivity. While successful models of the bulk properties of such phenomena have been produced, detailed microscopic descriptions that include the roles of vortices have been exceptionally difficult to develop. This NSF award supports research aimed at filling this crucial niche through the experimental study of Bose-Einstein condensates. Made of millions of trapped atoms in an ultracold vapor, Bose-Einstein condensates can be manipulated and detected in the laboratory with microscopic precision, and theoretically understood and modeled with techniques utilizing microscopic descriptions of atomic interactions and quantum mechanics. As the coldest known objects in the universe, dilute-gas condensates also act as coherent fluids and can be used to study fluid and superfluid phenomena in ways not possible before their first experimental observations in 1995. This research program integrates NSF-supported laboratory work with the theoretical efforts of international colleagues into a larger collaborative investigation of turbulence physics, phase transition dynamics, and new vortex creation and manipulation mechanisms in gaseous superfluids. This work pieces together some of the most difficult parts of the larger puzzle of building a microscopic understanding of vortex behavior, turbulence, and related phenomena in fluids and superfluids. The results of this research are thus expected to have significant and exciting broader impacts in the development of physics as a discipline, and in a wide area of specific fundamental and applied physics topics. By investigating new techniques for vortex manipulation, this study will also develop tools of utility to potential future techniques utilizing quantum-level information processing. As the education of students is certainly one of the most important aspects of federally sponsored research, this project involves undergraduate and graduate students; the education of both groups is key to maintaining national and international strength in science and technology. The majority of this award is allocated to the financial support of graduate students in order to teach these students state-of-the-art experimental techniques in a cutting-edge area of research, and more generally how to do high-quality independent research. These graduate students will carry on a tradition of technical excellence as they eventually merge into other laboratory settings, and will be suited to effectively teach research skills to future generations of graduate students.