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Centre for Atom Optics and Ultrafast Spectroscopy

Dr 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. At Sussex and UQ I studied the possibilities and limitations of atom chips to create and control Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs). This work included one of the first proposals for an ultra-sensitive chip based atom interferometer, a study of thermal noise currents close to a room temperature conductor and new ways of fabricating atom chips.

Now I work predominantly with ultracold Fermi gases and molecular BEC where our lab at Swinburne has produced long lived condensates of 6Li2 molecules. Recently we have studied p-wave Feshbach molecules and used Bragg spectroscopy to characterise pairing across a broad s-wave Feshbach resonance. Research with Fermi gases is now exploring 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:

  • 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).