Scientists at JILA, a joint program of NIST and the University of Colorado Boulder, have achieved a temperature of 170 billionths of a degree above absolute zero, creating a new state of matter called a Bose-Einstein condensate. This superatom behaves as a single entity and is the first of its kind, existing only in the lab. The team used laser and magnetic traps to cool rubidium atoms to this unprecedented low temperature, forming a tiny ball of atoms that is stationary as allowed by quantum mechanics. The condensate is surrounded by a diffuse cloud of normal atoms and is visible through a video camera. The achievement is significant because it allows scientists to study quantum effects on a large scale, similar to threshold effects observed in superconductivity and superfluidity.
Keywords: Atomic, quantum, rubidium
