Magnetically and optically confined Bose-Einstein condensates were studied near a microfabricated surface. Condensate fragmentation observed in microfabricated magnetic traps was not observed in optical dipole traps at the same location. The measured condensate lifetime was >or=20 s and independent of the atom-surface separation under both magnetic and optical confinement. Radio-frequency spin-...

We report the observation of coexisting Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) and Fermi gas in a magnetic trap. With a very small fraction of thermal atoms, the 7Li condensate is quasipure and in thermal contact with a 6Li Fermi gas. The lowest common temperature is 0.28 microK approximately 0.2(1)T(C) = 0.2(1)T(F) where T(C) is the BEC critical temperature and T(F) the Fermi temperature. The 7Li cond...

We revisit the exciton mechanism of superconductivity in the framework of microcavity physics, replacing virtual excitons as a binding agent of Cooper pairs by excitations of an exciton-polariton Bose-Einstein condensate. We consider a model microcavity where a quantum well with a two-dimensional electron gas is sandwiched between two undoped quantum wells, where a polariton condensate is forme...

An exact diagonalization study reveals that a matter-wave bright soliton and the Goldstone mode are simultaneously created in a quasi-one-dimensional attractive Bose-Einstein condensate by superpositions of quasidegenerate low-lying many-body states. Upon formation of the soliton the maximum eigenvalue of the single-particle density matrix increases dramatically, indicating that a fragmented co...

We show that knots of spin textures can be created in the polar phase of a spin-1 Bose-Einstein condensate, and discuss experimental schemes for their generation and probe, together with their lifetime.