Carl Wieman

Facts

Carl E. Wieman

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Carl E. Wieman
The Nobel Prize in Physics 2001

Born: 26 March 1951, Corvallis, OR, USA

Affiliation at the time of the award: University of Colorado, JILA, Boulder, CO, USA

Prize motivation: “for the achievement of Bose-Einstein condensation in dilute gases of alkali atoms, and for early fundamental studies of the properties of the condensates”

Prize share: 1/3

Work

One of the fundamental numbers in the world of quantum mechanics is the spin quantum number. Particles and atoms that have whole-number spin are described by other rules and equations than those that have half-number spin. Satyendra Nath Bose and Albert Einstein predicted in 1924 that at very low temperatures atoms with whole-number spin would be able to concentrate themselves in the lowest energy state and form a Bose-Einstein condensate. In 1995 Carl Wieman and Eric Cornell succeeded in proving the phenomenon in a rarefied gas of rubidium atoms at an extremely low temperature.

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