Cold atoms beyond atomic physics

Abstract

In the last 25 years, much progress has been made producing and controlling Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) and degenerate Fermi gases. The advances in trapping, cooling and tuning the interparticle interactions in these cold atom systems lead to an unprecedented amount of control that one can exert over them. This work aims to show that knowledge acquired studying cold atom systems can be applied to other fields that share similarities and analogies with them, provided that the differences are also known and taken into account. We focus on two specific fields, nuclear physics and statistical optics. The nuclear physics discussion occurs with the BCS-BEC crossover in mind, in which we compare cold Fermi gases with nuclear and neutron matter and nuclei. We connect BECs and atom lasers through both systems' matter-wave character for the analogy with statistical optics. Finally, we present some challenges that, if solved, would increase our understanding of cold atom systems and, thus, the related areas.