RESEARCHERS DEVELOP FIRST ATOM LASER.

Byline: Knight-Ridder Tribune News Wire

Over the past 30 years, lasers have become a familiar and versatile tool, beaming minute particles of light known as photons to perform eye surgery, etch computer circuits and read postal bar codes.

Now, after years of effort, a research team will announce today that it has created the first atom laser - a device that shoots out a tight beam of atoms instead of photons, making possible even more precise operations.

Such a laser could conceivably perform near-miracles, such as depositing single atoms onto computer chips, tracing much finer patterns than now possible and greatly increasing the chips' speed and capacity.

But, in the words of Wolfgang Ketterle, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology physicist who led the atom laser team, ``It will never be used in supermarket scanners or CD players.''

That is because an atom laser can exist only in an extremely low vacuum at temperatures close to absolute zero, where atoms slow down and assume the form of an entirely new category of matter.

The development of the atom laser, a longtime goal of physicists, will be reported this week in two scientific journals, Physical Review Letters and Science magazine.