Physicists at the Joint Quantum Institute (JQI) of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the University of Maryland have proposed a recipe for turning ultracold “boson” atoms—the ingredients of Bose-Einstein condensates—into a “supersolid,” an exotic state of matter that behaves simultaneously as a solid and a friction-free superfluid.

The nuclei of ordinary hydrogen atoms contain only a single proton. If a neutron is added, the hydrogen becomes deuterium. In principle, molecules that contain deuterium in place of hydrogen atoms are chemically identical. However, there can be significant differences.

The investigation of complex materials such as high-temperature superconductors is problematic because of the presence of disorder and many competing interactions in real crystalline materials.

In developing a model to explain the motion of atoms in a magnetic field, scientists have overcome a decades-old obstacle to understanding a key component of magnetic resonance.

Researchers at Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) in The Netherlands have developed a technique for generating atom clusters made from silver and other metals. Surprisingly enough, these so-called super atoms (clusters of 13 silver atoms, for example) behave in the same way as individual atoms and have opened up a whole new branch of chemistry.

International Business Machines Corporation (abbreviated IBM, nicknamed "Big Blue"; NYSE: IBM) has conducted an interesting research in order to advance in atomic scale computing and other nanotechnology applications.

A new electron microscope recently installed in Cornell's Duffield Hall is enabling scientists for the first time to form images that uniquely identify individual atoms in a crystal and see how those atoms bond to one another. And in living color.

A new electron microscope recently installed in Cornell's Duffield Hall is enabling scientists for the first time to form images that uniquely identify individual atoms in a crystal and see how those atoms bond to one another. And in living color.

One of the great theoretical challenges facing physicists is understanding how the tiniest elementary particles give rise to most of the mass in the visible universe.

Like two ballroom dancers waltzing together, the two atoms of an oxygen molecule severed by a metal catalyst usually behave identically. But new research reveals that on a particular catalyst, split oxygen atoms act like a couple dancing the tango: one oxygen atom plants itself while the other shimmies away, probably with energy partially stolen from the stationary one.

Optical clocks might become the atomic clocks of the future. Their "pendulum", i.e. the regular oscillation process which each clock needs, is an oscillation in the range of the visible light.

Nanoscopic “lumps” of atoms, known as clusters, are the specialty of a research team headed by Dieter Fenske from the University of Karlsruhe and the Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe.