Cold Atoms and Molecules

Cold atoms are that are maintained at the temperatures close to zero Kelvin typically below the temperatures of some tenths of microkelvins (µK). The atom's quantum mechanical properties become important at these temperatures. Cold molecules offer exciting properties on which new operational principles are to be based or that may allow the researchers to study a qualitatively new behaviour of the matter for e.g., Bose-Einstein condensates structured by the electric dipole interaction. To reach such low temperature combination of several techniques are used such as atoms are usually trapped and pre-cooled using the laser cooling in a magneto-optical trap technique.