Note to users. If you're seeing this message, it means that your browser cannot find this page's style/presentation instructions -- or possibly that you are using a browser that does not support current Web standards. Find out more about why this message is appearing, and what you can do to make your experience of our site the best it can be.

Science 25 March 2005:
Vol. 307. no. 5717, pp. 1883 - 1885
DOI: 10.1126/science.1110247
Prev | Table of Contents | Next

Perspectives

PHYSICS:
Bose-Einstein Condensates Interfere and Survive

Juha Javanainen

A Bose-Einstein condensate in a dilute gas is a collective state of atoms that acts like a quantum mechanical wave with a phase. In his Perspective, Javanainen highlights the demonstration by Saba et al. that the phase difference between two condensates can be measured without destroying the condensates. The experiments open up new ways to manipulate condensates, which are macroscopic objects, as if they were quantum mechanical entities. Measurement devices based on matter-wave interferometry are a potential application.

The author is in the Department of Physics, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT 06269, USA. E-mail: jj{at}phys.uconn.edu

Read the Full Text

To Advertise     Find Products

Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)