ATOMIC LASER(1996)

KETTERLE DEVELOPES A WORKING ATOM LASER.

There is no rigorous definition for the atom laser or (an optical laser, for the matter) all the people agree that coherence and brightness is the essential feature.

The idea of the atom laser has been around for many years, and its principle is based on the more conventional optical laser. Normal laser emits light, but, unlike a normal lamp, the laser light is “coherent,” so that it can focus to a pinpoint, and also travel a long distance without spreading out like a flashlight beam. By the time the optical laser was introduced in 1960, scientists were already familiar with the wavelike properties of matter, and the atom laser was under consideration as a theoretical possibility. The atomic laser is analogous to an optical laser. Instead of electromagnetic waves the atom laser emits matters waves

But it was not until 1997 that reports of the first rudimentary working model were released. A bizarre form of super cooled matter called Bose Einstein condensate made it all possible. This strange stuff, in which the individual atom “loss their identity” and coalesce into a single “blob,” is in some ways like the photons of light in a laser. It was Professor Wolfgang Ketterle and his colleagues who first managed to produce a Bose Einstein condensate in 1995.

Not long afterward, in November 1996, Ketterle and his team cheered as their atom laser worked for the first time. They had successfully used a Bose Einstein condensate as a source of coherent atom to create a “mater wave”. Described like a dripping faucet, it emitted pulses of droplets of atom, each containing up to several million atoms.

Practical use of the atom laser yet to materialize, and it is confined to research at present. However, it is likely that atom lasers will be used in the future to directly deposit atom onto computer chips, enabling the creation of much smaller, finer patterns and more powerful computer.

The atomic and molecular sample are cooled down to near absolute zero through the interaction with one or more laser field is called laser cooling