By Ann Schrader
Denver Post Medical/Science Writer

Sept. 10 - Four years ago, physicists in Boulder claimed the "Holy Grail'' of physics when they created a new type of matter by chilling atoms into a lockstep formation.

But the creation of Bose-Einstein condensate, which first was predicted by Albert Einstein more than 70 years ago, was only half of the quest.

Now another group at the same joint research institute has persuaded a vapor of anti-social subatomic particles called fermions (pronounced FARE-mee-ons) into a state of matter in which they start working together and start behaving like waves.

Called the first Fermi degenerate gas of atoms, the ultra-low temperature quantum, or most basic, state achieved in June by JILA researchers may lead to more accurate atomic clocks, new insights into electronic devices and improved superconductivity-based technologies.

The accomplishment announced today in the journal Science "will probably be at the top of the list of important physics news for this year,'' said Carl Wieman, the University of Colorado physics professor who was part of the team that created the Bose-Einstein condensate in 1995.

The successful experiment was conducted by Deborah Jin, 30, a physicist in the Commerce Department's National Institute of Standards and Technology physics lab, and Brian DeMarco, 25, a graduate CU-Boulder physics student.

Just as the Bose-Einstein creators weren't comfortable with the Holy Grail label, Jin said she wouldn't describe the work that way.

"This is a very important and very fundamental extension of Bose-Einstein condensation,'' she said, with "a lot of the same techniques'' being used.

In the weird world of quantum physics, atomic particles are either fermions such as neutrons, electrons and protons, or they are bosons (pronounced BOZE-ons). The difference is the "spin'' of the particles' axis.

Wieman and NIST's Eric Cornell used bosons, which are more neighborly and are easier to coax into a super-atom, in their potentially Nobel Prize-winning achievement.

Building on the earlier work, Jin and DeMarco used a puff of potassium gas. They cooled the gas with diode lasers similar to ones in CD players.

They dropped the temperature of the gas from room temperature to 100-millionths of a degree Celsius above absolute zero. That is the theoretical temperature where all molecular motion stops. It's about -459.67 degrees Fahrenheit or -273.16 degrees Celsius.

At that point, they turned off all of the light. Fermions, named for Nobel Prizewinning physicist Enrico Fermi, whose work led to development of the atom bomb, don't like to collide. They obey a physics principle that prohibits them from occupying the same place at the same time.

But continued cooling couldn't happen without collisions, so Jin and DeMarco had to figure out a way to get the solitary fermions to run into each other.

They trapped the potassium gas atoms with magnetic fields generated by running electric current through coils. The magnetic field split the atoms' energy levels.

Then Jin and DeMarco bathed the gas atoms with lasers and radio waves so half the atoms were in one quantum state and the other half were in another. The difference allowed the atoms to collide.

"It's just a beautiful scheme,'' said Dan Kleppner, the Masssachusetts Institute of Technology physicist who is considered the godfather of quantum condensation studies.

Jin said the hotter atoms - those with the highest energy - were allowed to escape, much like the evaporative process of coffee cooling in a mug.

As more of the hotter atoms "evaporated'' from the magnetic trap, the temperature of the remaining atoms dropped to their most basic nature and started behaving in unison.

When the scientists turned off the magnetic trap, the gas of atoms expanded because energy causes them to fly apart. Atoms with the most energy travel farthest.

For evidence of their creation, they took a snapshot of the resulting cloud of atoms.

"How big the cloud got in a certain amount of time tells us about the energy and temperature of the cloud,'' Jin said.

The head of another team using a different approach to the same puzzle said the JILA work "has lovely textbook results'' on how fermions behave.

"It's really a spectacular result. . . . We're very impressed,'' said John Thomas, a physicist at Duke University.

Jin and her team "found the optimum atom . . . and she was able to rocket right in there,'' Thomas said. "We all know each other, and it's tremendous fun to be able to do quality science.''

The new finding builds on work by Weiman and Eric Cornell that already has been suggested as possible Nobel Prizewinning.

"The creation of a Fermi degenerate gas is a major scientific achievement, and a lot of scientists have been trying to make it ever since we created the Bose-Einstein condensate,'' Wieman said.

Cornell, the NIST physicist who collaborated with Weiman, said Jin and DeMarco's achievement "is a considerably more difficult task'' than what he and Wieman faced and overcame.

Jin's group, among others around the world, would like to push the envelope even further by getting the fermions to work in pairs if cooled more.

"We would like to study the properties,'' Jin said, with the ultimate goal of making fermion condensate.

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