Article
Article
Bose-Einstein condensation
Article By:
Ketterle, Wolfgang Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Nobelist.
Last reviewed:October 2019
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1036/1097-8542.757474
When a gas of bosonic particles is cooled below a critical temperature, it condenses into a Bose-Einstein condensate. The condensate consists of a macroscopic number of particles, which are all in the ground state of the system. Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) is a phase transition, which does not depend on the specific interactions between particles. It is based on the indistinguishability and wave nature of particles, both of which are at the heart of quantum mechanics.
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