At a time when colleagues are building larger, ever-faster circular atom smashers, Michael Chapman's work looks like a parody. He and his fellow physicists at Georgia Tech have built a particle-storage ring less than an inch wide; the cold atoms inside travel at just two miles per hour. But this toylike device has a serious goal: It may allow scientists to control atoms the way lasers control light.
Chapman's team calls their ring the Nevatron, a play on the mile-wide Tevatron particle accelerator at Fermilab outside Chicago. The Nevatron consists of two closely spaced circular wires attached to an aluminum plate. Electric current creates a magnetic field that confines atoms between the wires. The researchers cool rubidium atoms until they barely move and inject them in. "Then they just loop around like a carnival ride," Chapman says.
Photograph courtesy of Georgia Institute of Technology
He envisions using the Nevatron as ...
