Coaxing Light From Single Atoms

A. Watson

A microscope with unprecedented sensitivity, based on a beam of atoms rather than light or electrons, is a step closer to reality thanks to a German collaboration that has coaxed helium atoms into an intense, needle-fine beam. In contrast to energetic probes such as x-rays or electrons, helium atoms bounce lightly off the target surface without damaging it, so an atom-beam microscope would be a unique instrument for examining surface structures nonintrusively, such as watching the buzzing vibrations on the surface of the minute crystals in metals, say researchers.

Victor Leong

After physicists rocked the world 3 years ago by coaxing supercold rubidium gas into a new form of matter, dozens of labs have sprung into hot pursuit of Bose-Einstein Condensation (BEC), a state in which individual atoms merge and act as a single giant atom. On the Web, the condensate community congregates at the BEC page hosted by Georgia Southern University in Statesboro.

Andreas Osterwalder

John Maddox

Ian S. Osborne

Quantum Optics Photons do not naturally interact with each other and must be coaxed into doing so. Liang et al. show that a gas of Rydberg atoms—a cloud of rubidium atoms excited by a sequence of laser pulses—can induce strong interactions between propagating photons. The authors could tune the strength of the interaction to make the photons form dimer and trimer bound states. This approach should prove useful for producing novel quantum states of light and quantum entanglement on demand. Science , this issue p. [783][1] [1]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.aao7293