Italian researchers have found a way to achieve the so-called 'atomic laser' envisaged by Albert Einstein.
Lasers are highly concentrated streams of light particles, or photons, with multiple uses in industry and medicine.
Unlike photons, atoms bounce into one another so much that an atomic laser - eagerly awaited in the field of micro-electronics - has proved impossible to achieve up to now.
A Florence University team led by Massimo Inguscio and Giovanni Modugno used potassium isotopes to build an 'atomic condensate' squeezed into a harmonious whole by a magnetic field - very similar to a theoretical model envisaged by Einstein and fellow physicist Satyendra Nath Bose in 1925.
"In this way the interaction of atoms is virtually non-existent," Inguscio said.
He said the discovery - published in the current edition of the international journal Physical Review Letters - paved the way for a raft of applications, especially for ultra-high-precision measurements.
