Number 117 (Story #3), March 8, 1993 by Phillip F. Schewe and Ben Stein MANIPULATING BEAMS OF ATOMS with techniques normally used for beams of light is becoming more common. The high electric fields available in intense laser light and the advent of submicron machining have facilitated the development of a variety of atom beam splitters, lenses, mirrors, and interferometers. One example: a laser beam, channeled through a dielectric medium by total internal reflection, will exhibit an "evanescent field," an exponentially-decaying light field in the vacuum just outside the medium. This light has been used to reflect atoms. According to Martin Sigel and Jurgen Mlynek of the University of Konstanz in Germany, if this or other atom mirror designs could be employed to make a cavity for containing standing or traveling atom waves, then it might be possible to store cold atoms (useful in the search for Bose condensation) or even to produce coherent atom beams. (Physics World, Feb. 1993.)