Experiments frequently come with surprises. Here I will discuss a serendipitous discovery of Bose fireworks, the sudden emission of bright, narrow jets of matterwaves from Bose-Einstein condensates with oscillating interaction strength. This structure emerges from collective collisions of the condensate, seeded by quantum fluctuations and amplified by Bose stimulation. The process resembles a matterwave version of superradiance. Based on a novel pattern recognition and correlation analysis, we identify the fundamental collision processes that underlie the structure of the fireworks.  

Reference: Logan W. Clark, Anita Gaj, Lei Feng, Cheng Chin, Collective emission of matter-wave jets from driven Bose-Einstein condensates, Nature 551, 356 (2017).