• Srivatsan Chakram is a graduate student working with Professor Mukund Vengalattore in Cornell’s first ultracold atom group. He is interested in the non-equilibrium behavior of quantum many-body systems. “We really don’t have a clear picture of how isolated quantum many-body systems reach equilibrium. There are quite a few conjectures, but there haven’t been many experimental studies on probing such non-equilibrium dynamics”, he says. In solid state materials, such experiments would have to be on pico- or femtosecond time scales posing great technical challenges. With cold atoms, these dynamics proceed on millisecond time scales allowing for many more insightful studies. He is studying phenomena such as quantum quench dynamics in a magnetic Bose condensate. More ...