Tag: laser cooling
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A giant leap closer to the continuous atom laser
Physicists have created a steady-state Bose-Einstein condensate – a long-sought feat that opens the door to a variety of applications, including in holography and quantum computing.
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When cooling down really means slowing down
Consider this post the latest in a loosely defined series about atomic cooling techniques that I’ve been writing since June 2018. Atoms can’t run a temperature, but things made up of atoms, like a chair or table, can become hotter or colder. This is because what we observe as the temperature of macroscopic objects is […]
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The trouble with laser-cooling anions
For scientists to use lasers to cool an atom, the atom needs to have two energy states. When laser light is shined on an atom moving towards the source of light, one of its electrons absorbs a photon, climbs to a higher energy state and the atom as a whole loses some momentum. A short […]
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Relativity’s kin, the Bose-Einstein condensate, is 90 now
The BEC was Einstein’s last major prediction and it took a revolution in quantum optics to be realised.