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Assoc Prof Chris Vale

Project: Ultracold Fermions

Office: EN177

Telephone: +61 3 9214 8026 (office), +61 3 9214 5836 (lab.)

Fax: +61 3 9214 5160

Email: cvale@swin.edu.au

Education:

BSc (Hons), Victoria University, Australia (1995)
PhD in Physics, Victoria University, Australia (2001)

Employment

2000 - 2002, Postdoctoral research fellow, University of Sussex, UK
2003 - 2006, Research Fellow, University of Queensland, Australia
2007 – 2008, Senior Research Fellow, Swinburne University of Technology, Australia,
2008 – present, Project Leader – Molecular condensates, ARC Centre of Excellence for Quantum Atom Optics, Swinburne University of Technology, Australia.

Research Interests

My research lies in the broad area of experiments with ultracold atoms, both bosons and fermions. I began in this area looking at Bose-Einstein condensates on atom chips. In 2007 I moved to Swinburne and began working on ultracold Fermi gases near a Feshbach resonance. We have studied p-wave Feshbach molecules and used Bragg spectroscopy to characterise pairing across a broad s-wave Feshbach resonance. More recently we have been looking at aspects of universality in Fermi gases and the transition to lower dimensions. Research with Fermi gases is now beginning to explore the interface of condensed matter and atomic physics where systems of cold atoms are being used to realise highly pure and precisely controlled quantum-many-body systems.

See our Group Webpage for further details.

Selected Publications:

  • E. D. Kuhnle, S. Hoinka, P. Dyke, H. Hu, P. Hannaford, and C. J. Vale, Temperature dependence of the universal contact parameter in a unitary Fermi Gas, Phys. Rev. Lett. 106, 170402 (2011).
  • P. Dyke, E. D. Kuhnle, S. Whitlock, H. Hu, M. Mark, S. Hoinka, M. Lingham, P. Hannaford, and C. J. Vale, Crossover from 2D to 3D in aWeakly Interacting Fermi Gas, Phys. Rev. Lett. 106, 105304 (2011).
  • E. D. Kuhnle, H. Hu, X.-J. Liu, P. Dyke, M. Mark, P. D. Drummond, P. Hannaford, and C. J. Vale, Universal Behavior of Pair Correlations in a Strongly Interacting Fermi Gas, Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 070402 (2010).
  • G. Veeravalli, E. Kuhnle, P. Dyke, and C. J. Vale, Bragg spectroscopy of a strongly interacting Fermi gas, Phys. Rev. Lett. 101, 250403 (2008).

  • J. Fuchs, C. Ticknor, P. Dyke, G. Veeravalli, E. Kuhnle, P. Hannaford, W. Rowlands, and C. J. Vale, Binding energies of 6Li p-wave Feshbach molecules, Phys. Rev. A 77, 053616 (2008).

  • J. Fuchs, G. J. Duffy, G. Veeravalli, P. Dyke, M. Bartenstein, C. J. Vale, P. Hannaford and W. Rowlands, Molecular Bose-Einstein condensation in a versatile low power crossed dipole trap, J. Phys. B 40, 4109 (2007).

  • A. Ratnapala, C. J. Vale, A. G. White, M. D. Harvey, N. R. Heckenberg and H. Rubinsztein-Dunlop, Laser locking by direct measurement of detuning, Opt. Lett. 29, 2704, (2004).

  • C. J. Vale, B. Upcroft, M. J. Davis, N. R. Heckenberg and H. Rubinsztein-Dunlop, Foil-based atom chips for Bose-Einstein condensates, J. Phys. B: At. Mol. Opt. Phys. 37, 2959 (2004).

  • M. P. A. Jones, C. J. Vale, D. Sahagun, B. V. Hall and E. A. Hinds, Spin coupling between cold atoms and thermal fluctuations of a metal surface, Phys. Rev. Lett. 91, 080401, (2003).

  • E. A. Hinds, C. J. Vale and M. G. Boshier, Two-wire waveguide and interferometer for cold atoms, Phys. Rev. Lett., 86, 1426 (2001).