near absolute zero, a gas of quantum particles can condense into an unusual state of matter, called bose-einstein condensation (bec), that behaves like a giant quantum particle. the rigorous connection has recently been made between the physics of the microscopic many-body dynamics and the mathematics of the macroscopic model, the cubic nonlinear schrodinger equation (nls). i'll discuss recent progress with gerard ben arous and benjamin schlein on a central limit theorem for the quantum many-body systems, a step towards large deviations for bose-einstein condensation.