Latest Laser cooling Stories

redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online By aiming a laser at antihydrogen atoms, researchers have found that they can force them to lose energy and plummet to temperatures 25-times colder than previously achieved -- a discovery which could greatly assist the study of the more elusive properties of antimatter. The method, which was developed by a team of experts from the US and Canada, is described in the most recent edition of the Journal of Physics B: Atomic, Molecular...

A research team from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the University of Maryland has succeeded in cooling atoms of a rare-earth element, erbium, to within two millionths of a degree of absolute zero using a novel trapping and laser cooling technique. Their recent report* is a major step towards a capability to capture, cool and manipulate individual atoms of erbium, an element with unique optical properties that promises highly sensitive nanoscale force or...

Scientists from the University of Texas at Austin open up new avenues of research using atomic coilguns and lasersStopping and cooling most of the atoms of the periodic table is now possible using a pair of techniques developed by physicist Mark Raizen at The University of Texas at Austin. Raizen stopped atoms by passing a supersonic beam through an "atomic coilgun" and cooled them using "single-photon cooling." The techniques are a major step forward in atomic physics and have a variety of...

Trapping, cooling, and storing neutral atoms requires an elaborate process. As a first method we have, now almost classic, laser cooling in a "magneto-optical trap". Atoms are shot from six directions with laser beams whose frequency lies somewhat below the excitation energy. In this way, the particles always absorb light when they move themselves on the beam - because of the Doppler effect, they are in resonance - and then are slowed down in this direction. We call it cooling, when...