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A step closer to atom lasers that stay on

Continuous amplification of coherent matter waves has been demonstrated, allowing an exotic state of matter called a Bose–Einstein condensate to be maintained indefinitely. This set-up is the matter-wave analogue of an optical laser enclosed by fully reflective mirrors, and it could have uses in both applied and fundamental physics.

This is a summary of: Chen, C.-C. et al. Continuous Bose–Einstein condensation. Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-04731-z (2022).

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doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-01497-2

‘Expert opinion’ and the figure are published under a CC BY 4.0 licence.

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