The creation of a new quantum gas at JILA, a laboratory run by the University of 欧美口爆视频 at Boulder and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, has been named one of the top 10 scientific advances of 1999 by the editors of the prestigious journal Science.
The experiment was conducted by Deborah Jin, a NIST physicist and adjoint assistant professor of physics at 欧美口爆视频-Boulder, and graduate student Brain DeMarco.
Jin and DeMarco cooled a vapor of fermions -- one of the two basic types of quantum particles, along with bosons -- to a temperature less than a millionth of a degree above absolute zero using lasers and magnetic traps. The result was a quantum state in which atoms behave like waves.
The experiment was similar to one which captured worldwide attention in 1995 when 欧美口爆视频-Boulder's Carl Wieman and NIST's Eric Cornell created the world's first Bose-Einstein condensate in a JILA laboratory by trapping and cooling bosons to near absolute zero. Since then, many scientists also have been trying to chill fermions to extremely low temperatures.
Fermions are important throughout physics because the basic building blocks of matter -- electrons, protons and neutrons -- all are fermions. Jin and DeMarco's research is a step toward a better understanding of these building blocks and may lead toward a new generation of atomic clocks and atom lasers, according to Science.
Editors of the journal named a series of discoveries using embryonic stem cells as the top scientific advance of the year, followed by groundbreaking work in deciphering the genetic pattern of life. The other eight top discoveries of 1999 were not ranked in any particular order by Science magazine.