A cloud of atoms can become one wave
In a Bose–Einstein condensate, thousands of atoms occupy the same quantum state and behave as a single matter wave. It was made in a gas in 1995.
Established2 min read
Bosons are allowed to share a state. Einstein, extending Bose, said an ideal gas should collapse into that state if it were cold and dense enough. The gases would have frozen first. Laser cooling and magnetic traps got alkali atoms there without a solid: a few hundred nanokelvin, a visible speck, a new phase.
Cornell, Wieman, and Ketterle shared the 2001 Nobel Prize. The condensate interferes with itself like light. Matter, in this corner of the lab, is an optical instrument. The chunk of metal on your desk is the opposite limit, and both limits are the same theory.
Caveats
- The condensate is a dilute gas in a trap, not a new kind of rock you can pocket.
Sources
- 1Anderson M. H., Ensher J. R., Matthews M. R., Wieman C. E., Cornell E. A.. Observation of Bose–Einstein Condensation in a Dilute Atomic Vapor. Science 269, 1995.