Foreword
Laser cooling and trapping:
Basic techniques and applications
The field of Laser Cooling and Trapping has during the last decade grown
into one of the most active subfields of
Atomic Physics. The progress has
been tremendous, culminating in the observation of Bose-Einstein
condensation in 1995. The first steps in laser cooling had already been taken in
the late sixties, but the field really took off in the mid eighties with the
first traps for neutral atoms and the demonstration of new powerful cooling schemes.
In 1997 this field was honored with the Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to
Steven Chu, Claude Cohen-Tannoudji and William D. Phillips.
The topics covered by this special issue include original schemes for cooling and
trapping, collisional studies with cold atoms, manipulation of cold samples,
metrological and other applications, and theoretical studies of degenerate
Fermi and Bose gases.
We hope that this special issue will provide the reader with a useful source for information about the present state of a field which continues to produce fascinating and unpredicted results.
M. Inguscio and A. Kastberg
Feature Editors Laser Cooling and Trapping
Contents
