Ultracold is cold, very very cold! In the chart below you can have an idea of the temperature range in which different physical systems normally occur. It covers, roughly, 21 orders of magnitude! In the lower part of that spectrum lies what we call ultracold physics. It is so cold that the de Broglie wavelength [(proportional to the inverse of the square-root of the temperature) becomes so large that it can exceed the average interatomic distances in typical ultracold quantum gases. This is an unique property of such systems, one that leads to new phases of the matter like Bose-Einstein Condensates. Moreover, at such temperatures, thermal fluctuations are suppressed allowing for an extremely accurate manipulation of the properties of such systems. This, and much more, have allowed for several technological applications as well as opened up new ways to explore fundamental physics in a well controlled matter.
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