Atom-laser gallery
The key to making an atom laser beam is to extract the atoms in a coherent way from the trap in which the condensate is produced. The (a) MIT and (b) Munich atom lasers use pulsed and continuous radio-frequency radiation to "flip" the spin of the atoms in a magnetic trap, releasing them to fall downwards under gravity.
(c) In the Yale atom laser, gravity pulls the atoms from a weak periodic optical trap. (d) The Gaithersburg device uses light, not gravity, to "kick" atoms out of the trap so the direction of the beam can be selected by the experimenter. The maximum intensity is shown in red while the minimum is in blue.