Randall G. Hulet

Last updated
Randall Hulet
Born(1956-04-27)April 27, 1956
NationalityAmerican
Alma mater Stanford University
MIT (Ph.D.)
Known for Atomic physics
Awards I. I. Rabi Prize (1995)
Willis E. Lamb Award (2011)
Herbert Walther Prize (2017)
Scientific career
Fields Physics
Atomic Physics
Ultracold Atoms
Institutions Rice University
Doctoral advisor Daniel Kleppner
Website rcqm.rice.edu/researchers/randy-hulet/

Randall Gardner Hulet (born April 27, 1956, in Walnut Creek, California [1] ) is an American physicist.

Hulet studied at Stanford University, earning a bachelor's degree in 1978. He received his doctorate in 1984, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology under Daniel Kleppner, and then joined the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Boulder with David Wineland. In 1987, he became an assistant professor of physics at Rice University, and was promoted to associate professor in 1992, then full professor in 1996. He was appointed Fayez Sarofim Professor of Physics and Astronomy in 2000.

He is a pioneer of experiments with ultracold atoms and Bose-Einstein condensates (BEC). [1] He is known for the first realization of a Bose-Einstein condensate in an atomic gas with attractive interaction, where the formation of the BEC competes with the usual condensation due to the attractive interaction. With enough atoms, an attractively interacting BEC becomes unstable, and Hulet's group was the first to observe such a system collapse. Another major achievement working with bosons was his realization of matter wave solitons in a BEC.

Hulet has also performed pioneering experiments with degenerate Fermi gases. He achieved the first observation of a polarized degenerate Fermi gas, realized a degenerate Bose-Fermi mixture, and studied spin-imbalanced Fermi gases, including a possible realization of the FFLO state in a 1D system. His group has investigated fermions in optical lattices as a model of systems of solid-state physics, and observed short-range antiferromagnetism in a Hubbard system, similar to physics also observed in the cuprate high-temperature superconductors. [2]

Hulet has received a number of awards for his work, including the Herbert Walther Prize [3] in 2017, the Willis E. Lamb Award for Laser Science and Quantum Optics [4] in 2011, the I. I. Rabi Prize of the American Physical Society in 1995, [5] and a Presidential Young Investigator Award from the National Science Foundation in 1989. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Physical Society. Hulet is an honorary doctor of the University of Utrecht.

Selected publications

Related Research Articles

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In condensed matter physics, a Bose–Einstein condensate (BEC) is a state of matter that is typically formed when a gas of bosons at very low densities is cooled to temperatures very close to absolute zero. Under such conditions, a large fraction of bosons occupy the lowest quantum state, at which microscopic quantum-mechanical phenomena, particularly wavefunction interference, become apparent macroscopically. More generally, condensation refers to the appearance of macroscopic occupation of one or several states: for example, in BCS theory, a superconductor is a condensate of Cooper pairs. As such, condensation can be associated with phase transition, and the macroscopic occupation of the state is the order parameter.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Supersolid</span> State of matter

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Optical lattice</span> Atomic-scale structure formed through the Stark shift by opposing beams of light

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A sonic black hole, sometimes called a dumb hole or acoustic black hole, is a phenomenon in which phonons are unable to escape from a region of a fluid that is flowing more quickly than the local speed of sound. They are called sonic, or acoustic, black holes because these trapped phonons are analogous to light in astrophysical (gravitational) black holes. Physicists are interested in them because they have many properties similar to astrophysical black holes and, in particular, emit a phononic version of Hawking radiation. This Hawking radiation can be spontaneously created by quantum vacuum fluctuations, in close analogy with Hawking radiation from a real black hole. On the other hand, the Hawking radiation can be stimulated in a classical process. The boundary of a sonic black hole, at which the flow speed changes from being greater than the speed of sound to less than the speed of sound, is called the event horizon.

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References

  1. 1 2 "Randy Hulet". www.staff.science.uu.nl.
  2. Hart, Russell A.; Duarte, Pedro M.; Yang, Tsung-Lin; Liu, Xinxing; Paiva, Thereza; Khatami, Ehsan; Scalettar, Richard T.; Trivedi, Nandini; Huse, David A.; Hulet, Randall G. (23 February 2015). "Observation of antiferromagnetic correlations in the Hubbard model with ultracold atoms". Nature. 519 (7542): 211–214. arXiv: 1407.5932 . Bibcode:2015Natur.519..211H. doi:10.1038/nature14223. PMID   25707803. S2CID   4463418.
  3. "The Optical Society and DPG Name Randall Hulet Winner of the 2017 Herbert Walther Award". www.osa.org. 2016-12-05.
  4. "Randall G. Hulet -- the 2011 Willis E. Lamb Award for Laser Science and Quantum Optics". www.lambaward.org.
  5. "Prize Recipient".