Phase Transitions in Strongly-Interacting Matter and Cold Atomic Systems

While of vastly different energy scales, cold atomic gases and dense nuclear matter possess a surprising number of similarities in their qualitative behavior and phase structure. The novel properties of these systems arise from the often strong interactions of many degrees of freedom, which leads to a very rich, and complex, phase structure. Recent experimental advances have given researchers an unprecedented level of control over atomic systems and allowed for a detailed study of the phase transitions of condensed matter systems, while bigger and better particle accelerators continue to push the frontier of our knowledge of quark and hadron physics. The results of these studies demonstrate some striking similarities including a transition from ”fundamental” (quarks and BCS atomic pairs) to composite (hadrons and BEC atomic pairs) degrees of freedom and nearly inviscid flow dynamics. In this paper we study these similarities and discuss ways in which the two fields may inform one another.