Gora Shlyapnikov receives award for quantum research
At the bi-annual international conference about Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC 2011) in Sant Feliu (Spain) the Senior BEC Award was presented for the first time this year. Professor Gora Shlyapnikov had the honour of receiving the prize last Sunday. He was awarded it for his contributions to the development of a theory about ultracold quantum gases.
Shlyapnikov is research director at the Laboratoire de Physique Théorique et Modèles Statistiques (CNRS) in Paris. He is also a professor at the University of Amsterdam and is closely involved in the FOM programme 'Quantum gases'.
Quantum gases
Quantum mechanics describes processes that take place at a very small scale, where it is difficult to carry out practical research. Ultracold quantum gases give researchers the opportunity to study and manipulate quantum effects in the laboratory. For this the gases are cooled to just above absolute zero, at which point numerous physical phenomena become visible. Shlyapnikov’s theoretical work focuses on explaining and describing these phenomena. For this he uses theories from the field of condensed matter and from microscopic descriptions of atoms. The work of Shlyapnikov is closely linked to experiments on quantum gases.