Browse Physics

Researchers demonstrated an atom slowing and trapping scheme that may apply to elements that have been difficult or impossible to cool before. The atoms need only an unpaired electron, not a special set of internal states.

Researchers have extracted electrons from atoms in a controlled way using sub-femtosecond light pulses. They also imaged the electrons’ quantum states with unprecedented clarity.

Particles floating in a fluid don’t simply ‘go with the flow’ but cut across the fluid currents, according to experiments that measured both the particles and the fluid independently.

Researchers cooled large dye molecules to one-tenth of a degree Kelvin–the coldest temperature ever for large molecules. The technique could work with protein molecules and allow a new level of precision spectroscopy.

A laser beam might be 100 million times wider than an atom, but the atom still ‘knows’ the beam isn’t infinite. The effect could be important for some ultraprecise measurements.

A new ‘mirror’ can reflect atoms and should improve control over atomic beams.

A new class of materials that cools in response to laser light could one day help microchips and other devices run faster and more reliably.

Researchers see hints of the first molecules made from electrons and positrons.

The quantum state of atoms known as a Bose-Einstein condensate can be a tool for probing quantum effects in empty space.

A new technique images the electron clouds in small molecules.

Researchers coaxed an electron to orbit an atomic nucleus like a tiny planet.

A new technique produces friction that halts a moving gas cloud and might ultimately cool molecules to new temperature lows.

Researchers have lifted a single atom from a surface and then replaced it, without using any electric current.

New measurements make fermium the heaviest and most elusive element to reveal its spectrum.

Gregarious bosonic atoms can act like antisocial fermionic atoms, theorists predict, and the fake-fermions can form pairs that mimic a long-sought new state of matter.

In an ultracold gas, polar molecules could pair up at large distances and form weakly bound ‘super molecules.’

Ions dropped into a Bose-Einstein condensate could seed the formation of micron-wide charged shells of atoms, or ‘molecular ions’.

Placing a cold gas in an array of laser traps could result in atoms that are only partially there.

Holograms make it possible to focus a beam of atoms into complicated patterns on a surface.

The 2001 Nobel Prize in Physics recognized the discovery of Bose-Einstein condensation.