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| Recent developments in cooling and trapping neutral atoms with electromagnetic fields has led to rapid growth of the field of ultracold quantum gases with applications ranging from fundamental physics to quantum technology device developments. In particular, the critical temperature of Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) can routinely be reached and surpassed in the laboratory. Such experiments provide an ideal testbed for studying the behaviour and dynamics of the gas, governed by a non-linear Schr\"{o}dinger equation (Gross-Pitaevski equation).
In this talk, we will introduce so called {\em atom chips}, featuring microfabricated conductor patterns used for controlling and manipulating atoms merely microns away from the chip surface. This concept provides large flexibility in shaping environments that are well suited for studies involving high-spatial resolution tailoring of quantum gases in combination with fast and precise temporal control. We will give a number of examples of the type of effect that can be studied in this context, including change in dimensionality of the system, soliton creation and dynamics and the impact of steps in the spatial profile of the non-linearity. |
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