SIGNIFICANT EVENTS - SCIENCE EVENTS
10/19/01
New Book Describes Cold Atoms
Pierre Meystre announces that his new book "Atom Optics" has just been published at
Springer Verlag (with perfect timing with the Nobel announcement). To Meystre's knowledge,
this is the first book on this subject. Springer's description of the book follows:
More information can be found on the
Springer site.
The book will also have a web-component, which can currently be seen as a beta-version
at http://www.optics.arizona.edu/aobook.
"One of the most profound revolutions brought about by quantum mechanics is that it
does away with the distinction between waves and particles: atoms, in particular, can
exhibit all the properties that we associate with wave phenomena, such as diffraction and
interference; it has recently even become possible to prepare collections of atoms in
coherent states, like those of photons in a laser beam. These developments are at the
core of the rapidly expanding field of atom optics."
