Italian scientists build atomic laser

The UPI article Italian scientists build atomic laser announces the discovery by Italian scientists of a way to produce an "atom laser," which is device that generates a beam of coherent atoms (as opposed to a beam of coherent photons as generated by a classical laser.) Albert Einstein predicted in 1925 that it might be possible to produce coherent beams of atoms, but all previous attempts to actually create an atom laser failed due to an inability to prevent the atoms in the beam from colliding with each other.

Atom lasers would be particularly useful for advanced microelectronics applications.

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