Putting the quantum brakes on light
Electromagnetically induced transparency relies on interference between different electronic transitions in an atom and has been used to make opaque media transparent at certain wavelengths in the pas...
Quantum physics breakthrough wins Nobel Prize
Two of the physicists, Horst L. Störmer from Columbia University, New York, and Daniel C. Tsui, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, discovered the effect – called the fractional qu...
Trapping breakthrough for molecules
Many of the optical and magnetic techniques used to trap and cool atoms do not work with molecules because they have complex internal energy levels. Instead Doyle and his colleagues chilled the molecu...
Superfluidity seen on microscopic scales
Bulk superfluid helium has many unusual properties – it can flow up walls and through narrow pores without resistance. Helium-4 and helium-3 become superfluid below 2.12 and 0.003 Kelvin respect...
Amplification of matter waves
Bose-Einstein condensation itself was only observed for the first time in 1995. There has been intense interest in the process ever since because of the unique quantum behaviour displayed by matter in...
Laser-cooled Nobel prize
Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, Steve Chu, and Bill Phillips have won the 1997 Nobel Prize for Physics
Fractional charge carriers discovered
Electric charge normally comes in an indivisible unit: the charge of an electron. Indeed, quarks were thought to be the only particles with fractional charge – and today they only exist in parti...
