GUIDING NEUTRAL ATOMS AROUND CURVES can be performed with tiny current-carrying wires which deflect the atoms through a lithographically patterned "atom waveguide." Physicists at the University of Colorado and from NIST-Boulder send laser-cooled (42 micro-kelvin) atoms into a 10-cm guide where they undergo three curves (with a 15-cm radius of curvature). Three million atoms per second can be sent through the course; at the far end the atoms are ionized and then counted.

A possible use for the new waveguide, part of a growing toolbox of atom optics components, will be in atom interferometry and other forms of high-precision metrology. The researchers hope to send atoms (or should we say atom?) from a Bose-Einstein condensate into the waveguide. (Muller et al., Physical Review Letters, 20 December 1999; Select Article.)