update.559 (fwd)

[Jim Choate]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2001 14:10:49 -0400 (EDT)
From: AIP listserver <physnews at aip.org>
To: physnews-mailing at aip.org
Subject: update.559


PHYSICS NEWS UPDATE                         
The American Institute of Physics Bulletin of Physics News
Number 559  October 3, 2001   by Phillip F. Schewe, Ben Stein, and
James Riordon

NEW MODEL OF INTERGALACTIC MAGNETIC FIELDS. 
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ULTRAVIOLET PROMPTS BACTERIAL TREK.  Evidence of the
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BEC ON A CHIP.  First it was neutral atoms guided along a wire
(Update 416).  Then it was a beam of atoms steered over the surface
of a microchip (Update 486).  Now the latest feat of atom optics,
performed by a group at the Max Planck Institute in Munich, is the
creation of a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) of rubidium atoms in a
microscopic magnetic trap built into a lithographically patterned
chip.  Not only was this the fastest-formed BEC (it took only 700 ms
to form, faster even than the all-optical BEC method reporter earlier
this year see Update 545) but the condensate can be maneuvered
around the microchip a few microns above the surface (see Update
516); in fact the condensate was moved a distance of 1.6 mm.  This
capability opens up the possibility of numerous atomtronic
applications in interferometry, quantum computing, navigation,
lithography, holography, and entanglement experiments.  (Hansel et
al., Nature, 4 October 2001.)