There has been some argument that the term "atom laser" is misleading.

An atom laser is a coherent state of propagating atoms.

Another application, which might also benefit from atom lasers, is atom interferometry.

The physics of an atom laser is similar to that of an optical laser.

The current developmental stage of the atom laser is analogous to that of the optical laser during its discovery in the 1960s.

Atom lasers are critical for atom holography.

Much like an optical laser, an atom laser is a coherent beam that behaves like a wave.

Some ongoing experimental research tries to obtain directly an atom laser from a "hot" beam of atoms without making a trapped BEC first.

Ordinary lasers produce coherent particles of light - photons - while atom lasers produce atoms that behave collectively as if they were a single wave.

The first pulsed atom laser was demonstrated at MIT by Professor Wolfgang Ketterle et al. in November 1996.

The De Broglie wavelength of the atoms is much smaller than the wavelength of light, so atom laser can create much higher resolution holographic images.

A pseudo-continuously operating atom laser was demonstrated for the first time by researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics in Munich.

But the creation of the atom laser is such an experimental tour de force that two leading scientific journals, Science and Physical Review Letters, are both making public today different aspects of the work.

From the creation of the first atom laser there has been a surge in the recreation of atom lasers along with different techniques for output coupling and in general research.

Further use of the words laser and maser in an extended sense, not referring to laser technology or devices, can be seen in usages such as astrophysical maser and atom laser.

No practical uses for the atom laser are in sight, Dr. Ketterle said in an interview, but coherent beams of atoms might one day be used to build microscopic structures an atom at a time.

Recent advances in physics and biology using optical micromanipulation include achievement of Bose-Einstein-Condensation in atomic vapors at submillikelvin temperatures, demonstration of atom lasers, and detailed measurements on individual motor molecules.

In a landmark experiment based on peculiarities of quantum theory, a team of physicists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has created an "atom laser" that behaves in some respects like conventional light lasers.

However, this does not constitute a continuous atom laser since the replenishing of the depleted BEC lasts approximately 100 times longer than the duration of the emission itself (i.e. the duty cycle is 1/100).

The main similarity between M.I.T.'s atom laser and an ordinary laser is that the particles in both are coherent - that is, they are in phase with one another like soldiers marching in cadence.

The main differences between an optical and an atom laser are that atoms interact with themselves, cannot be created as photons can, and possess mass whereas photons do not (they therefore propagate at a speed below that of light).

He was well known in the field of quantum optics for his first observation of optical superradiance, experimental demonstrations of cavity-enhanced and cavity-suppressed spontaneous emission and the experimental demonstration of the first single atom laser.

Indeed, "laser" stands for "Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation" which is not particularly related to the physical object called an atom laser, and if at all describes more accurately the Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC).

In physics, the strong confinement limit, or "festina lente" limit, is a mode of an atom laser in which the frequency of emission of the Bose-Einstein condensate is less than the confinement frequency of the trap.

He then build up his own group in Hänsch's lab and conducted pioneering work on atom lasers, observed long-range phase coherence in a Bose-Einstein condensate, and realized the superfluid to Mott-insulator transition with a Bose gas in an optical lattice.