The Bose-Einstein Condensate; March 1998; Scientific American Magazine; by Cornell, Wieman; 6 Page(s)

In June 1995 our research group at the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics (now called JILA) in Boulder, Colo., succeeded in creating a minuscule but marvelous droplet. By cooling 2,000 rubidium atoms to a temperature less than 100 billionths of a degree above absolute zero (100 billionths of a degree kelvin), we caused the atoms to lose for a full 10 seconds their individual identities and behave as though they were a single "superatom." The atoms¿ physical properties, such as their motions, became identical to one another. This Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC), the first observed in a gas, can be thought of as the matter counterpart of the laser--except that in the condensate it is atoms, rather than photons, that dance in perfect unison.

Our short-lived, gelid sample was the experimental realization of a theoretical construct that has intrigued scientists ever since it was predicted some 73 years ago by the work of physicists Albert Einstein and Satyendra Nath Bose. At ordinary temperatures, the atoms of a gas are scattered throughout the container holding them. Some have high energies (high speeds); others have low ones. Expanding on Bose¿s work, Einstein showed that if a sample of atoms were cooled sufficiently, a large fraction of them would settle into the single lowest possible energy state in the container. In mathematical terms, their individual wave equations--which describe such physical characteristics of an atom as its position and velocity--would in effect merge, and each atom would become indistinguishable from any other