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Nature 415, 25-26 (3 January 2002) | doi:10.1038/415025a

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Bose-Einstein condensation: Breaking up a superfluid

Henk T. C. Stoof

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Ultracold atoms held in a three-dimensional pattern by a web of light beams can now be switched from a superfluid to an insulating state. This achievement may be useful for performing quantum computations.

At extremely low temperatures of less than one-hundred-millionth of a degree above absolute zero (10 nanokelvin), the atoms in a rubidium gas essentially all join into a single quantum state to form a Bose–Einstein condensate. In such a condensate the atoms can flow without friction, and so the gas is a superfluid.