Professor Wieman will discuss how atoms can be cooled with lasers to temperatures of 100 billionths of a degree above absolute zero. Once chilled, the atoms can be held and manipulated with light. This new technology has made possible the construction of ultra-precise atomic clocks, atom interferometers, and the achievement of "Bose Einstein condensate or BEC." This is a new state of matter in which a large number of atoms lose their individual identities and behave as a single quantum entity, the "superatom" and exhibit the nonintuitive quantum behavior normally important only at much tinier scales. The study and use of the curious properties of BEC has now become an important subfield of physics.

The Maurer Lecture Series, sponsored by the Department of Physics in Fulbright College, is named for alumnus Dr. Robert D. Maurer, co-inventor of the first telecommunications-grade optical fiber and winner of the National Medal of Technology.

The lecture is free and open to the public. A reception will follow.

Maurer lectures have been organized every year since 1995. Past lectures have included N. Bloembergen, William Phillips (both Nobel Laureates), Richard Zare, Lawrence Krauss (author, astrophysicist), and Phillip Morrison, Steven Chu, and Leon Lederman, among others. These lectures were co-sponsored by ASGC.

On Friday, March 10, Dr. Wieman will offer a physics colloquium entitled, "Using the Tools of Science to Teach Science" at 4:00 p.m. in the Paul Sharrah Lecture Hall (Physics 133). A reception at 3:30 p.m. will precede the colloquium. More information on the colloquium can be found on the Physics Department Web Site.