Breakthroughs of the Year: 2022

Trapped, ultracold atoms allow scientists to study a range of exotic quantum phenomena, such as superconductivity and superfluidity. But it is difficult to achieve these conditions for many metallic atoms. For the first time, Asst Prof Travis Nicholson and his colleagues have successfully cooled indium atoms to temperatures near absolute zero, by using magnetic fields and lasers to trap and cool these atoms. This result was published in Physical Review A 105, L061101 (2022) and highlighted in Nature (June 2022).