ABSTRACT
The methods of laser cooling permit to achieve samples of atoms that have temperatures in the micro-kelvin range. By using more traditional methods (evaporative cooling, for instance), it is then possible to reduce the temperature and to achieve, for example, Bose–Einstein condensates. These samples, realized by Cornell and Ketterle, have coherent properties similar to laser, hence, the name atom laser, but the photon is now replaced by the atom.
