

NASA Pursues Atom Optics to Detect Gravitational Waves - Reltair
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/technology/features/atom-optics.html

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andrewflnr
Why rubidium? If I recall correctly, rubidium was also used in the first Bose-
Einstein condensate experiments. Does it have properties that make it
especially useful for low-temperature physics?

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amatus
Yes. As I understand it rubidium is used because you can cool it with cheap
laser diodes from CD players.

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mturmon
This is just a $100K award
([http://www.nasa.gov/offices/oct/stp/niac/niac_2012_phaseIand...](http://www.nasa.gov/offices/oct/stp/niac/niac_2012_phaseIandII_awards.html)),
highly speculative, in an area (long-baseline interferometry) that has been
explored by many groups.

