Eric Allin Cornell
active c. 1961, Palo Alto, California, United States
American physicist who co-created the first Bose–Einstein condensate in a gas of alkali atoms in 1995.
Cornell studied at Stanford and earned his PhD at MIT in 1990 under Dave Pritchard, working on ion traps and cold atoms. In 1992 he joined JILA — the joint institute of the University of Colorado and NIST — in Boulder.
On June 5, 1995, his group with Carl Wieman cooled a vapor of rubidium-87 atoms to about 170 nanokelvin, producing the first Bose–Einstein condensate in atomic matter. He shared the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physics with Wieman and Ketterle, and has continued research on ultracold physics, collective excitations, and precision measurement.
Nobel-winning work
In 1995 Cornell and Carl Wieman at JILA combined laser cooling with evaporative cooling in a time-averaged orbiting-potential (TOP) magnetic trap to bring about 2,000 rubidium-87 atoms below 200 nanokelvin. Below the critical temperature, a large fraction of the atoms fell into the lowest quantum state — a Bose–Einstein condensate, the state of matter Einstein predicted in 1924–1925 that had never been directly observed.
Velocity-distribution images showed the condensate's sharp peak rising out of the thermal background — the classic signature of a macroscopic quantum phase transition. The same year Ketterle's MIT group achieved condensation in sodium with far more atoms, enabling the demonstration of interference between two condensates — a matter-wave 'atom laser'. The 2001 Nobel honored all three 'for the achievement of Bose–Einstein condensation in dilute gases of alkali atoms'.
Workplaces: JILA / University of Colorado Boulder
United States