BEC Created and Moved in Surface Microtrap

Physicists at the University of Tuebingen (Germany) have, for the first time, succeeded in making a Bose-Einstein condensate in a microfabricated magnetic surface trap, a setup in which the condensate atoms reside at nK temperatures while the plane of the trap, only 100 microns away, is at room temperature. The trap, consisting of an array of seven wires (microns wide but mm long), is the smallest structure yet demonstrated in which atoms have been loaded and held in a stable configuration. The copper wires, small as they are, can carry nearly half a million amps/cm² of current for controlling the neutral BEC atoms.

According to the Tuebingen researchers (contact David Wharam, 49-707-129-76016, david.wharam@uni-tuebingen.de or Claus Zimmermann, claus.zimmermann@uni-tuebingen.de), the condensate can be urged along the wires (which act as a magnetic waveguide) the way photons are sent down an optical fiber. The next steps will be to understand how the trap fragments the condensate into several subcondensates floating like a line of nanochips in a row and possibly initiate interference between the blobs. (Fortagh et al., Applied Physics Letters, 29 July 2002.)