Nowadays lasers are everywhere: in the telephone network, your CD player, performing eye surgery, and even scanning groceries. Lasers made it possible to measure time and distance extremely precisely - something that the GPS system relies on. In 1995 the equivalent of a laser made from atoms became reality: gaseous Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs). It's hoped that atom lasers, too, will revolutionise the world we live in.
BECs occur if one makes bosonic atoms extremely cold (~100 nK). In a BEC all of the atoms behave coherently, like the photons in a laser. We can already do many things that lasers are used for, as the appropriate Atom Optical tools (mirrors, beamsplitters etc.) for BECs already exist.
Strathclyde has the only BEC in Scotland. It is formed in a 10cm diameter magnetic ring for cold atoms, and was one of the first rings in the world able to store BECs. We intend to turn the storage ring into an ultra-precise Sagnac interferometer and develop a new kind of ring, which should yield even higher sensitivity, as well as the flexibility to pursue other avenues of research.
