Scientists from the Institute of Quantum Optics and Quantum Information recently won an international competition for producing a Bose-Einstein condensate of the alkaline-earth element strontium. Key to the discovery was the scientists’ choice of 84Sr, an isotope that is not as abundant in nature as other strontium isotope candidates like 86Sr and 88Sr. Their research showed that the 84Sr isotope had an ideal scattering length for producing a Bose-Einstein condensate. In experiments where strontium atoms were cooled to near absolute zero in a optical trap, a Bose-Einstein condensate of 150,000 atoms was produced.
[Source: R&D Magazine]
