Talk:Cold Atom Laboratory

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Please update the article

The article currently has:

The instrument will create extremely cold conditions in the microgravity environment of the ISS, leading to the formation of Bose Einstein Condensates that are a magnitude colder than those that are created in laboratories on Earth.

Please change "will" and update the article with the latest information on BECs on the ISS: here's what I added to 2020 in science#June:

Scientists report the generation of rubidium Bose–Einstein condensates (BECs) in the Cold Atom Laboratory aboard the International Space Station under microgravity which could enable improved research of BECs and quantum mechanics, whose physics are scaled to macroscopic scales in BECs, support long-term investigations of few-body physics, support the development of techniques for atom-wave interferometry and atom lasers and has verified the successful operation of the laboratory.^[1][2][3]

--Prototyperspective (talk) 13:49, 4 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the references and text. Added to new Results section. ★NealMcB★ (talk) 00:58, 24 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

References

1. Lachmann, Maike D.; Rasel, Ernst M. (June 2020). "Quantum matter orbits Earth". Nature. pp. 186–187. doi:10.1038/d41586-020-01653-6. Retrieved 4 July 2020.
2. "Quantum 'fifth state of matter' observed in space for first time". phys.org. Retrieved 4 July 2020.
3. Aveline, David C.; Williams, Jason R.; Elliott, Ethan R.; Dutenhoffer, Chelsea; Kellogg, James R.; Kohel, James M.; Lay, Norman E.; Oudrhiri, Kamal; Shotwell, Robert F.; Yu, Nan; Thompson, Robert J. (June 2020). "Observation of Bose–Einstein condensates in an Earth-orbiting research lab". Nature. 582 (7811): 193–197. doi:10.1038/s41586-020-2346-1. ISSN 1476-4687. Retrieved 4 July 2020.

Results section needs to be updated

I noticed that the current Results section is lagging in terms of literature about experiments conducted with the CAL, and as such I added the Update Needed template to it.

For example, this 2024 Williams et. al article notes (among other things) that they were able to use ⁸⁷Rb BECs on the CAL to demonstrate: Mach–Zehnder interferometer in microgravity; observe shear-Ramsey interference fringes lasting longer than 150ms during freefall; perform a proof-of-principle of a photon recoil frequency measurement. (The latter of which meant that the CAL was also the first quantum matter-wave sensor in space.)

It'd be great if the results secction could be updated to reference recent results such as these.

Neuroxic (talk) 07:26, 30 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]