"Exploring Flatland with cold atoms" 
A talk by Jean Dalibard of Laboratoire Kastler Brossel  
12 march 2012  at 5pm
Auditoire Stueckelberg, Ecole de Physique, Geneva University.

In his world-famous novel "Flatland" published in 1884, the English writer Edwin Abbott imagined a social life in a two-dimensional world. With a very original use of geometrical notions, E. Abbott produced a unique satire of his own society.
Long after Abbott's visionary allegory, Microscopic Physics has provided a practical path for the exploration of low-dimensional worlds. During the last decade, a novel environment has been developed for the study of low-dimensional phenomena. It consists of cold atomic gases that are confined in tailor-made electromagnetic traps. With these gases, one hopes to simulate and understand more complex condensed-matter systems. The talk will discuss some aspects of this research, both from an experimental and a theoretical perspective.

Une verrée en compagnie du conférencier sera offerte après le colloque.